How to backup Vista with Thinkvantage?

Hi,

I'm trying to make a backup image of Vista, which came with my new R61i.
I used the Thinkvantage backup and restore tool, waited until it said that the
backup has been successfully completed and placed on my local hard drive.

However, now I'd like to make a bootable disk with this image, in order to be able to reinstall it if something happens.

The problem is that I can't find this image on the hard drive. Can anyone help? Perhaps I'm doing something wrong.Is there another way to do the backup?

Thanks.

 

"# Click Start, select All Programs, select ThinkVantage, then click Create Rescue and Recovery Media.
# Select Create a set of Product Recovery discs now.
Verify the correct recordable drive is selected and click OK.
To verify the recovery discs were created successfully, repeat step one and verify the following text appears in the Recovery Discs section:
You have already created a set of Product Recovery discs. The Microsoft(R) license for your operating system permits you to create one set of Product Recovery discs. If your Product Recovery discs have been lost, stolen or damaged, contact your local Support Center for assistance."

See here for full instructions with screen caps:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-68317.html

Cheers

 

If you have Vista Business, or Vista Ultimate, there is Vista Complete PC backup included with Vista. It will make a terrific highly compressed backup on Two dual layered DVDs. I back up my 32 gigabytes of content on two Dual layered DVDs.

To recover, you need a Vista distribution disk, which you would boot and then use to recover.

If you have a recovery partition, it will back that up too.

 

Good call Renee - another good option. You have 2 choices teo. Using R&R will only back up your original system. If you use it, your TP will be returned to the same state it was in when you opened the box for the first time. If you use the method Renee suggested, you will have a backup of your entire system, with all the settings and changes and additions you have made to date. The considerations are 1) What kind of backup you want. 2) You need a bootable Vista distribution disk for the second method (can get for around 10 USD if you don't already have one). 3) How much time and plastic you want to burn when you make the backup (difference depends on changes you have made to your system). Go for it.

 

Thanks a lot for your answers!

I started recovering with the first method (I've got Vista Home)..and I'm now at the 7-th CD!
Do you know if this is a normal behavior? Because I'm starting to doubt it..I mean, there's so little written on each disk! Can this be right?

 

I've got it through with 10 CDs

Yet, I've got one more question: I've made this backup because I fear that if I'll format the partition, I won't be able to make another OS work on the laptop.
I'm thinking about installing XP. How should I proceed? Should I download all available drivers for this thinkpad (which I found on the lenovo site? ) and install them right after installing XP? Will I be able to download them from the laptop (if there is no network driver available in the xp setup?)
Do you think it's safe to format the partition with vista and try to install xp?

Thanks a lot!

 

You'll be able to format the partitiong during the XP install. Follow the guide in my signature.

 

Just thought I would add what I have done for back-up and recovery. I use Complete PC Back-up and Recovery (Vista Business/Ultimate as Renee mentioned) however, I use it in sort of a unique way...

I am a fan of the Ultrabay SATA adapter since I like have lots of HDD space and rarely use an optical drive when I'm on the go. So, I put my back-up image on the Ultrabay SATA HDD. When I need to back-up I can use my bootable Vista USB drive to run the Complete PC Restore utility.

If interested, this is how to make a bootable Vista USB drive: http://www.otgnet.com/Content/Default.aspx?Cat=all,Title=3764

And here is the guide for recovering using Complete PC Restore:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial144.html

So basically, I can keep my USB drive with the laptop. If I ever need to restore, I can boot to the USB drive then restore from the Ultrabay SATA adapter.

BTW, the USB drive isn't absolutely necessary. You can boot to the Vista disk on the optical drive -> run Complete PC Recovery -> then when Vista is recognized on your c: drive you can swap the optical drive for the ultrabay drive and continue with the restore prompts.

There are lots of options, but the bootable Vista USB method I described is very handy.

For anyone unfamiliar with removing the optical drive and inserting an ultrabay drive, have a look at the videos in my sig. It's incredibly simple to hot swap them.

 

Wow! I wish I would have read this some days ago! It's so clear and friendly, I'm just looking forward to doing it!
thanks a lot!

 

One thing I wanted to mention about actual recovery from DVD's.....

You are likely to have multiple dvd's... and you start with the LAST DVD. The recovery software will study it for a while and say, Wrong disk!

At this point you put the first one in.

Stallen, I was very intererested in the information on bootable UFD drives... but when I went to read the link, the webpage doesn't seem to be working. My browser screen goes black and that's all that happens.

 

Good to know! Thanks

 

It's crucial to know... I threw a lot of DVD's away before I learned it because it looks like you have a bad Backup set.

If you put the first DVD in, it will say, "Wrong DVD".

 

Hmmm, it's working here on my end, but here is the cut & paste:

TIP: in this command... "xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\" ... the "e" is the USB drive. Make sure that "e" is really the USB drive. In my situation it was not, so I had to put the correct letter.

Personally, I am using a 4GB corsair usb drive which is probably slower than the Apacer USB drive they recommend, I use this one for a bootable USB drive ($27 free shipping): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233027

I you really want speed I also have the 4GB Corsair "GT" model (which I use for other purposes), but at more than double the cost ($70 free shipping) it hardly seems worth it unless you are a speed freak: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=81819-6

 

I should also add that for any "noobs" trying to do this... When using diskpart in the guide. Make sure to go to computer -> right click and select manage -> then click "disk management" make sure check what drive # your USB drive is assigned. Mine was not "disk 1". If I would have put disk 1, I would have wiped clean my ultrabay drive. Make sure to substitue the proper drive number in this command as well.

 

Stallen,

I'm in the middle of a project and sort of sleep deprived but need a diversion.

You know something that would really be nice... would not be to install an entire Vista DVD, but only the repair and utilities portion.

The end product would be an emergency key, usable for recovery and repair.

 

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I don't really need the entire Vista dvd, I just want the Complete PC recovery tool. I guess the entire Vista install disk would be great for someone that needs to frequently do full installs, but I try to avoid that with a few good back-up images.

I like to create a back-up image of the clean install + drivers only. Then another image with all of my applications and external hardware drivers.

Anyway, if you can think of a way to just get the restore utility only to boot, let me know. The only alternative I can think of would be to use vlite and completely strip it down to vista basic without any extras. I know that will fit on 1 standard CD. http://www.vlite.net/ That should work!

 

Crazy good idea stallen - booting from USB to do backup restore from another location. I dont know why I even continue to rep this guy since he has probably maxed out the number of hex bits available in the 'rep' field. I guess you could go another way, and have a bootable USB with Vista PE (portable edition) intalled, with your programs and data on it also. In a real pinch on the road, you could just boot from the USB and run Vista without taking the time to reinstall from backups. Would work well enough, at least for a short-term crisis.

 

Hee Hee... Thanks bsodder. I actually got the idea from my clean install thread when a member asked how to do a clean install on an X60 series that had no optical drive. It was suggested by "Orev" to create a bootable Vista USB drive on another PC with an optical drive. Orev provided that link in my clean install thread. That's were I got the idea that it would be very handy to use a USB drive to boot into the Complete PC recovery Utility.

By the way, I'll probably be update my Clean Install guide to include information on downloading and creating your own Vista installation disk for those who do not have a real vista install disk. Here is the information. I plan to use this and create a more user friendly guide with some better options for buring an image file when I get the chance.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/08/windows-vista-free-direct-download-link/

 

"Anyway, if you can think of a way to just get the restore utility only to boot, let me know. The only alternative I can think of would be to use vlite and completely strip it down to vista basic without any extras. I know that will fit on 1 standard CD. http://www.vlite.net/ That should"

That's not exactly what I wanted. What I really wanted was the restore utility plus other things such as Cmd. All of that together would be quite powerful in an emergency.

 

Stallen,

I have something rather interesting going on. VLITE was in interesting suggestin and an excellent one. I cut down needed vista components to about 585 MB and the ISO Boots.

But here is the problem. I have a Vista 32 desktop system and I generated a
bit system. My desktop as you know it 64 bits and that's the system I am testing on. I think this runs setup and I tell it I want to do repair. Reapair runs through the test of the system and then says..[paraphrasing] No, this is a 64 bit system and your need 64 bit software.

Not for our puposes, we do not. I want some universality for this. The trouble is, at this stage, I am locked in. I have no diagnostics and no way to get to anything that will allow me to identity what the running components are.

Now, I can write an interface, if a .Net Program will run in this environment and I think it will. I just need to know what components I'm running and also the name of the recovery program.

Any ideas on this? I may be able to do something as simple as replace the setup program with a .net program... That would be awful lucky.

 

I don't think I'm totally following you. Some of what you are saying is either over my head or I'm just not following or both.

Did you use vlite with a 32-bit disk? Do you need a 64-bit disk? You can create a 64-bit disk here by downloading these files and following this guide: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/12/22/64-bit-x64-windows-vista-official-direct-download-links/

After you have a regular 64-bit disk, you should then be able to use vlite on that disk.

I'm not sure if that helps. If not, perhaps you could "dumb it down" for me.

 

Did you use vlite with a 32-bit disk? Do you need a 64-bit disk? You can create a 64-bit disk here by downloading these files and following this guide: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/1...ownload-links/


I made it with a 32 bit disk. However.....

I don't want the original functionality where it comes up and asks you whether or not you want to install or repair and then runs a system test to determine what kind of software is on the system.

For a recovery, it doesn't matter what's on the harddrive... what is important is what you have on the UFD drive.

There is an .inf file that calls setup... however... I have written a tiny .Net interface and called it setup and it still runs the original setup. There are a couple of copies of that.

What I am saying is that I am trying to get around the supplied functionality. That would allow a universal UFD key for both 32 and 64 bit system instead of having one 32 bit ufd key and one 64 bit ufd. We don't want it scan the disk. We want to be able to immediately give the user some options.

 

ahh, I fully understand what you are trying to do now. Unfortunately, I lack the "know how" to get you there. Sorry

I would be very interested in this if you are able get it figured out. Please send me PM if/when you get it figured out.

 

I'll know very soon.

 

You're a bad @$$, Renee

 

Heheheh,

I have bizarre and frustrating results to report.

I am at the cmd prompt in the installation/boot environment.


The environment will not run a .Net Program... which is not a big surprise nor is it fatal to our purposes. It would be no large surprise that the .Net Framework is not installed in this environment.

However the following is wierd.... It will run Regedit in GUI mode BUT the environment will not run Windows Explorer.

I am trying to trying to find out why but the system is so sparse of tools for me to do any analysis with, that it's difficult to get any answers.

 

Hmmmm... I am certainly no expert on this, although I have had the unfortunate luck to have attempted recoveries on dozens of systems (in the traditional manner). But I think that a recovery does need some things from the install disk, and those things must match what is being repaired. That is why it checks. The windows backup files are not a ghost or trueimage bit copy of the entire partition. The boot block, bootstrap loader, and assorted initial system files are copied over as part of the repair process, because they are often what has been trashed. 32 bit versions would not start up a 64 bit system. Just a thought, based on how things used to work - maybe it will work now.

Nother question on this process - when you restore from Complete Backup Files, made with the Vista utility, does it ask you for a product key before doing the restore? This is how XP worked, and in fact, it asked you for a product key no matter what it was doing or where you got the files from. Totally annoying and sent me looking for the keys many times. If you do need a key that works, then us Thinkpadders cannot use this method, since Lenovo doesn't give us a key that works - you can do this only if you have your own product key. Something to consider for the people trying to decide if this is the way to go.

 

It does NOT ask for a key. I think the restore utility might be quite different than the repair utility on XP. First of all the images that I have made to an external hard drive are very large. Mine have only been slightly compressed and almost as large as the occupied space on my laptop (around 20GB or so). But who knows, maybe you are correct, maybe there are things on the installation disk that are needed to restore besides the restore utility itself.

 

"The windows backup files are not a ghost or trueimage bit copy of the entire partition. The boot block, bootstrap loader, and assorted initial system files are copied over as part of the repair process, because they are often what has been trashed. 32 bit versions would not start up a 64 bit system. Just a thought, based on how things used to work - maybe it will work now. "

I'm not talking about Windows backup at all. I am talking about Vista Complete PC Backup which does make an image copy of a system.

It exactly copies the partition and bootblock.



Nother question on this process - when you restore from Complete Backup Files, made with the Vista utility, does it ask you for a product key before doing the restore? ________________



No, you do not need a working key because it is an image backup.

One time, when I had an N100, I received two MS updates from automatic update. My system installed them and it rebooted but when it rebooted, it the updates had inactivated Vista. This was a friday night and Lenovo said I would have to wait and call microsoft on Moday. My machine would have been down for three days.

I had a recent backup and booted the installation disk and overwrote the system and as soon as the backup was done the system booted and ran as expected. I think downloaded a hotfix for the two patches if they ever showed up again.

So this is an image copy of the system disk and other partitions if desired.

Stallen, i am making some progress. I finally got the task manager up.

 

"First of all the images that I have made to an external hard drive are very large. Mine have only been slightly compressed and almost as large as the occupied space on my laptop (around 20GB or so). But who knows, maybe you are correct, maybe there are things on the installation disk that are needed to restore besides the restore utility itself."

This is really strange because my system is about 32 gigabytes of space. A backup requires about two Dual layered DVDs which is 16 gigabytes. That's a really good compression ratio.

 

I suppose it's a little more compressed than what I remembered. I just checked. My system is 29GB of space. My back-up is 21.5GB. That's still not as compressed as your back-up. Maybe it is set to compress higher when backing up to DVD?

 

Or very different kind of content......

Compression ratios will be content sensitive.

 

That is great news - that you do not need a product key to use the Vista complete backup utility - so it is making complete images of the system partition... Vista has some really useful new features, for all that it has been maligned by some users. I don't think I will be going back to XP.

 

I have been trying to tell people that.

The large changes in Vista are not cosmetic. It has become a very sopisticated operating system with everything need to be self supporting.

I've been running vista for over a year now and it is incredibly stable. My desktop runs 24x7 and I honestly cannot remember when I last rebooted it. But Vista's infrastructure is superlative.

 

On Vista Recovery Disks capability - they will be here with SP1

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070929/vista-sp1-recovery-disc/

 

Very good guide. Thanks. +Rep points.

 

I'm not sure I understand this part, if you use complete pc backup you will need a vista distribution disc but if you do the rescue and recovery you can boot off that? If you have vista business, can you use R&R first and then do a complete pc backup. That way your vista makes copies of both the boot disc and backup(I do not have a distribution disc)?

can you repeatedly use total pc backup at different intervals, do backup new images of the computer?

Thanks... *new vista user!