Rescue and recovery wiped out my external hdd

I have a lenovo thinkpad edge 14 that I got a few months ago. for the last few weeks the thinkvantage toolbox kept telling me I had one 1 issue to solve, and that was to create a system backup. So finally I decided to get it taken care of, so I plugged my external HDD and got it going. After realizing how long it would actually take, I cancelled it midway. I didn't think much of it.
Then today I happened to look at my external hdd and I realized that EVERYTHING I HAD GOT WIPED OUT. I was devastated. Some things on there were priceless to me, photos/videos/memories I wanted to keep with me for the rest of my life. Seriously. It seriously hurts thinking about what I lost. I don't know what happened. I could have been smarter and made more backups to my backup? I guess I'm not technically saavy. I thought my external hdd was safe enough. What the hell?? Just because I tried to follow the Thinkvantage suggestion, RESCUE AND RECOVERY.... I got the exact opposite result.. How the hell was I supposed to know..
I'm trying to see if I can use some software to recover my data, but I haven't had much luck with programs I've used. What can I do? Is there anything that Lenovo can help me with? I feel like I just got screwed over. I wish I had never listened to the Lenovo software. I pretty much wish I had never gotten this laptop. I'm pretty pist off at Lenovo, I don't know if I should be or not, but I don't care, I'm just super upset and disappointed.

I don't blame you for being upset. That really bites.
It doesn't help you now, but IIRC, if you do a backup to external drive via R&R's advanced menu, there's a "preserve existing data" checkbox.
That "backup right now" nag launches R&R in a mode that first formats the external drive. Not only does it wipe the drive, it also takes a very long time.
[edit] It's the "create rescue media" part of the R&R process (that puts the bootable R&R on the external HD) that wipes the drive. The one-click backup combines that and actually writing the backup in one operation. Very convenient...
Sorry I don't have a way to retrieve your data. All I can offer is sympathy - I got burned this way myself. Fortunately in my case there wasn't much on the external HD.
I have no idea why Lenovo doesn't include a "preserve" option in the one-click backup thing. It's a serious oversight.
Hopefully your post will save someone else.
Good luck,
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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Similar Messages

Recovery Disk wiped out all external HDD data.

On my western digital 1TB HDD, I have created a drive with name I: of size 20GB to take recovery partition. When start with Create Recovery disk and selected drive I:, it creates recovery partition backup however it wiped all other drives data of external
HDD. Now, what should I do to recover?? Can Microsoft help to get my 200 GBs data back due to its big bug??
Thanks & Regards, Ankur Mutha

It tells you that it's going to delete
all the data on that disk, in quite plain terms.
If your data is irreplaceable, chances are most of it is still there. There are commercial data recovery services that may be able to help you get it back, but they cost a good bit of money. Search for "disk drive data recovery" with
Google or Bing.
I suggest not trying to access the drive yourself as the more you do with it the more likely the sectors containing deleted data may be overwritten.
Good luck.
-Noel
Detailed how-to in my eBooks:
Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options
Configure The Windows 8 "To Work" Options

Rescue and Recovery backup with external hard drive

When I first backed up my computer to my WD 1 tb external hard drive using R&R, boot files were placed on the drive. Recently, some files I had corrupted my external hard drive and I had to fully erase it. Now, after making the drive recognizable again, I went to go back up my computer using rescue and recovery. This time, it asked me whether or not I wanted to make the drive bootable, I said yes, but an error popped up saying I needed 1000 more mb, even though I had 931 gb open. The backup started anyway, but it did not include any boot files. Is there a way to make the drive bootable the next time I backup? What is the difference between nonbootable and bootable? Help? Thanks.

I do NOT have a external Hard drive. If you just zeroed the drive, it is blank. Go into control panel,administrative tools, computer management, disk management. See if you can get a PROPERTIES of the external drive and post a Screen shot of that here. This will show what partition(s) are there, Fat32 vs NTFS. My experience is after you zero a drive, You have to boot your system, then use a Vendor (WD) standalone format utility or windows Disk manangement format, Make partition, etc. The screen shot i need is the one that says: DISK 1 (d 298.09 GB NTFS
Healthy(active,primary partition). This is what my 2nd drive, D, says. 1 partion on the drive.
When i added my second hard drive, it was blank. Booted up, BIOS recognized drive, Then i Formatted it with windows disk managment. I then pointed R&R to take backups to that drive. Create rescue media then made a Master boot record, install standalone R&R boots files, then took the backup. This makes my 2nd drive bootable, should i ever care to boot my D drive up and have R&R standalone program in control. Thus i have 2 bootable drives. C boots into windows, D boots into the rescue and recovery standalone program. I can also boot my C drive into R&R by hitting PF 11 at startup (bios) time.
Which version of r&r you have? Which version of windows? Windows 7 changed the way Master boot records are written.
You can go into R&R, advanced menu, create rescue media. Point to your External drive. WARNING. make sure the do not destroy existing data block is checked. IF YOU ARE brave, uncheck the destroy existing data. This will erase everthing on the drive!!! <<Warning. And be sure NOT to point to any drive you really love.
Buts lets 1st get the screen shot requested to make sure the drive is FORMATTED correcly.

Rescue and Recovery 4.3 on Win7 doesn't see a backup on external USB hard drive - Model W510

I've run the Rescue and Recovery utility within Windows 7 on two different external USB hard drives thinking that maybe it was a usb drive issue. When I open the R And R utility in expert mode I can see that both backups exist on their respective drives. I planned on updating my hard drive so I made a full hd backup and the R&R startup disc to boot the laptop from. The bios recognizes either external hard drive at boot with no problems. It shows the names and "+" sign next to drives. So I booted the drive at startup off the DVD drive with the R&R startup disc after I was sure that the bios recognized either external drives. Then when I choose a "Full" restore is of course asks me if I want to use hd, cd/dvd, or external usb drive which I choose the later. It then should show me the backup that I created earlier just as it did when I ran the utility from the Win7 environment so I can choose it to restore from. But I get a blank box showing no backups when I run the 4.3 R&R Startup disc. Again if I boot to Win7 and go into the R&R utility I can see the backup on the exact same USB external drive. Then boot off the CD startup recovery disc and it shows NO BACKUP! Help please! I want to shelf my old hard drive "as is" and create the Restore onto the new hard drive but the utility isn't working for me.
Thanks for any help.

Hmmm,
Seems like that _should_ work. Here's a way you might be able to finesse it: go to the advanced R&R menu in Win 7 and create rescue media on your USB drive. It's essentially the same process as creating the CD - it makes the USB drive bootable and puts a copy of R&R there.
There _should_ be an option to "preserve existing data" but be prepared to lose your existing backup and make it again.
Then just boot the external USB drive and see if R&R recognizes a backup image on the same drive from which you booted.
That's the way I usually migrate to new drives. Maybe it will get around your mysterious problem.
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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Rescue and Recovery 4.21 - Will not use all the freespace on 2nd HDD

I have had this problem for a while and upgrading to the latest release of RnR does not resolve it.
I have a 160GB 2nd HDD in my Ultra Bay and RnR comfortably backs up the initial image and three incremental images using a total of 90GB. However, subsequent backups are not made as the software reports that there is not enough space - even though there is some 40GB free and the incremental backups are always less than 2GB.
I am using this on a T61p if that is of any relevance.
Anyone have a solution?
Thanks

I looked into my Event Viewer and got a hint. Also, knowing that my anti-virus program,
BitDefender, has a feature that prevents modification to the registry without permission from
me, and I hadn't been asked for such, I decided to turn that feature off and try again.
That worked, and I now have the latest version of Rescue and Recovery installed.
Bob Stockler
G41 - 2886-5TU - Mobile Pentium 4 532 - 3.06 Gh
2 Gb RAM - 80 Gb Toshiba 5400rpm HDD - Win XP Pro

Rescue and Recovery -- USB external hard drive

Can anyone recommend the best external hard drive to use for Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery? I've been doing some research and I'm concerned about the Maxtor "one touch" software. If I choose to purchase a Maxtor external hard drive should I go in and delete any software on the drive before I back up from Rescue and Recovery? I have been having a lot of problems with Rescue and Recovery -- it's difficult to delete past backups, and I get hangups. But eventually it usually backs up. I have read reviews for the Maxtor one touch software and it sounds like it doesn't work well for restoring an entire system (problems with certain files, such as hidden files, etc.). But maybe that's not true? Also, do you recommend that I delete all previous backups before running a Rescue and Recovery backup? If not, if I ever had to restore from it, would it automatically use the most current backup?
Thanks in advance for any advice! I'm a novice, but I want to make sure that everything is backed up properly.

Herik,
I'm not sure I'm looking in the right place - the folders you specified don't exist, or they aren't where you indicated. I can only get to "Rescue and Recovery" in the HK - Local Machine registry folder - nothing further there. Here's what I have:
http://files.iclippy.com/109436/1251279402.jpg
Am I looking in the right place?
Note from Moderator: Image(s) >50k converted to link(s).
E
Thinkpad R40 2897-54U running Windows XP Pro

Backing up TO a FDE second HDD with Rescue and Recovery

Is it possible to back up my internal Drive C: HDD, which is a Lenovo FDE drive, onto a second HDD, also Lenovo FDE, installed in the Ultrabay slot using Rescue and Recovery? Using R61 and T61 machines and Windows XPP.
I don't see the point of backing up a FDE drive onto anything else, so please let me know if I am missing something!
Many Thanks.

Firstly the free version of esxi makes it deliberately difficult to do scheduled backup by not providing the licensing that backup software can use (you may still be able to do backups manually). Some free software such as unitrends will provide file backup, but not image backup. This restriction is one way VMware gets you to pay for essentials or other higher license. But I'll leave that issue aside and try to guess what else you might be asking us here.
From the hardware standpoint you can use any good nas such as qnap, synology, or high-rely. Each has strengths and weaknesses (higher cost for HR but better hardware and removable redundancy etc). At the connectivity layer you can use CIFS (windows share), NFS, or iSCSI. any of the 3 will work and have pros and cons iSCSI is slower for big image based backups so NFS or CIFS (using...

Ideas to improve the Rescue and Recovery System

Hi,
some weeks ago I ned to restore my system, while this process there was some difficulties with the Rescue and Recovery. But First my configuration:
I'm using a T61p with Windows Vista Ultimate installed.
On the System there are 5 Partitions
1. Rescue and Recovery
2. Windows Bootstrap
3. BitLocker Encrypted Windows Partition
4. Linux /boot
5. Encrypted Linux LVM
So, one morning I tried to start my ThinkPad and nothing worked anymore. After a Short time I found out that the boot sector of the windows bootstrap partition was corrupted. The Linux Partition worked fine and was startable with a GRUB CD-Rom.
Ich checked out the Rescue and Recovery system and was sad that I isn't possible to recover the boot sector of the bootstrap partition. The only way to rescue my system was to reinstall windows at all!
Thats a bad solution, because you can recover the boot sector with every OEM-DVD of Windows Vista, but this DVD is not available for a ThinkPad user.
So I backuped my files and reinstalled the system. While the reinstallation process rescue and recovery gives the option to install windows on C:. But on such a multiboot configuration it is not very clear what drive C: is. After some experiment I think he is taking the first parition after Rescue and Recovery or the first free space after it. At this place it would be much better if I can choose a parition for the installation.
So, if a Lenovo engineer is reading this, please think about to:
- Include some tools like boot sector recovering in the Rescue and Recovery system
- Adding a mode where you can choose the parition to install Windows.
Over and above that I'm really happy with my ThinkPad.
Thanks for reading.

Greetings,
This isn't so much a reply to Cobelius, or a solution, but a commiseration of sorts. Or at least an "I hear ya, buddy, I wish they'd improve some things about Rescue and Recovery, too."
I notice that no one else has replied to this thread. I hope at least that someone will read these posts, and pass 'em on to the appropriate developers.
Here's my story:
I am, overall, extremely happy with my brand, spanking new T500. So far, I'm only running a single OS, Vista Business 64.
However, I did make the following 'tweaks' to my setup, which brings out the flaws in the Rescue and Recovery software:
1) I used Truecrypt 6.1a to encrypt my system partition (leaving the original rescue partition intact)
(Side Note: Where my original drive C came with tons of empty space, I used DISKPART to shrink it a bit an created another primary partition as drive D. Hey, why the heck not? Originally, I wanted TrueCrypt to encrypt the entire drive, but this failed. Truecrypt said this was due to a hardware failure, but 20 hours of my life wasted scanning the drive with HDD Regenerator 1.51 revealed no bad sectors. So now Drive D is encrypted as an ordinary TrueCrypt container and mounted upon login. I'm okay with this solution, but if anyone wants to research why TrueCrypt couldn't do the whole disk, you have my thanks in advance.)
2) I bought a Maxtor BlackArmor(tm) hardware-encrypted USB external drive to use for my backups. I successfully used the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery tool to both create specific file backups as well as to image my entire drive C onto the BlackArmor device, once I mounted it (by running a built-in executable and supplying it with my secret password)
3) I set a Lenovo BIOS password for unlocking the boot hard drive.
So far, so good. I type the BIOS drive password, then theTrueCrypt password, and Vista takes over 12 minutes to become usable and, well, that's a Microsoft issue, isn't it?
But, here's the deal: WHAT IF I CAN'T BOOT FROM THE HARD DRIVE ANYMORE? Well, TrueCrypt made me create a bootable rescue CD which can restore my encrypted boot sector or permanently decrypt my hard drive. What it can also do is let me press the ESC key to boot without providing a password, which does a supposedly wonderful thing -- since it fails to boot my drive C, it takes me straight into the Lenovo Rescue And Recovery session.
The problem is, the Lenovo boot (version 4) takes me AUTOMATICALLY into a self-repair utility which wastes another 10 minutes of my time to finally tell me --d'uh-- that my boot sector is 'corrupted' (it isn't; it's merely ENCRYPTED by TrueCrypt. As it should be).
FLAW NUMBER 1: Rescue and Recovery should provide a default menu where automatic diagnosis is a CHOICE the user can elect not to make, or abort if it has begun.
FLAW NUMBER 2: You guys should enhance what appears to be a Vista PE environment (or BartPE, or whatever) with a few utilities, including an Explorer-like browser to examine the disk (which would snow nothing in my case, as my drives are encrypted), and a command prompt, and the ability to launch executables. The environment should also recognize USB drives.
As it happens, I used a third-party Vista PE rescue CD, Active@ Partition Recovery, to boot an environment having the utilities I needed. Using this tool, I was able to recognize a USB key that had TrueCrypt installed in 'traveller' mode (no windows registry keys needed). Running this app and providing my truecrypt password enabled me to unlock my Drive C, albeit by mounting it as another drive letter. This made it possible to read and write to my disk.
The encrypted Maxtor drive is visible, too, from this boot environment, but it appears as a CD-ROM drive, and yields no secrets until you run an executable file on it and enter the drive's password. And that worked, too. So I could find files to copy over to my hard drive, if I needed to.
However, in order to RESTORE files to my drive, I'd still need to be able to run Rescue and Recovery, or at least the Recovery portion. Which brings me to:
FUNDAMENTAL FLAW NUMBER 3: You need to create a Recovery tool that can run from within an external USB drive, without requiring shared .DLLs in various subfolders or windows registry entries. Lord knows, I certainly tried to copy RestoreNow.exe from C:\Program Files (x86)\Lenovo\Rescue and Recovery onto my Maxtor drive, along with whatever DLLs it called for, but it was hopeless. The damned thing just wouldn't run from the USB drive on the PE environment.
The way I see it, then, is that there really is no way to restore my hard drive should I suffer a catastrophic failure. Major bummer.
FUNDAMENTAL FLAW NUMBER 4: When I got my laptop, I created a series of recovery disks using the Lenovo supplied software. Booting with the first CD, however, only proved depressing, as I had to agree that the ONLY purpose for this CD was to recover my PC to factory-shipped condition. Which meant erasing my drive and restoring it with the contents of the other DVDs. But I want to restore what I backed up with Rescue and Recovery! My life SINCE the laptop shipped from the factory! Geez, Louise, why not let me choose to do THAT, too?
(Of course, the boot CD would need to allow me to execute the Maxtor program that unlocks my encrypted USB drive, and also let me execute TrueCrypt to unlock my hard drive.)
I sure hope someone forwards this to a developer who'll take it seriously, after s/he stops chuckling. You guys should just ship a usable Vista PE rescue CD with every laptop, I think. And a recovery-only tool that doesn't need DLLs or Registry Entries to run. It would help in so many ways.
In the meantime, I guess I'd better do all I can to ensure my laptop's hard drive doesn't die on me.
Again, other than for this teeny problem that "don't amount to a hill o' beans in this crazy world," I'm really happy with my T500.
Thanks for reading this, too. And happy holidays.

Rescue and recovery woes...

Greetings,
I tried to search for a solution but found none. I am running out of hard drive space on the pathetic 80 gig original drive.
Rescue and recovery tries to run but cannot as it says there is not enough space left to do a back up. How do I change the saved location for R&R to an auxiliary drive?
Also, how can I free up more space on the drive and move it off into the auxiliary drive(s)?
txs

Hi,
I'm not sure, how exactly you want to perform this, but here are some scenarious, that might be of interrest for you:
1) Copy the backup, that you have on your local HDD on a second HDD<External USB, or whatever else>
For this purpose you can use the rrcmd utility of RnR:
- simply start command line and navigate to the installation folder of RnR
- start this command:
rrcmd.exe copy location=x
where "x" is the location where you want to copy your current backup to
OR
you can accomplish this by opening RnR GUI and press in the Options/Settings the btton "Copy Backup" and this will guide you through the process.
2) Copy the backup, that you have on your local HDD on a second HDD<External USB, or whatever else> AND remove it from the local HDD to have some space:
do the above steps + after you are sure, that the backup was moved completely to the second location, then run following command:
rrcmd.exe delete location=x
wehere "x" is the location where the origilan backup was stored in. For your situation, this is the local HDD
NOTE: do this afte you detached the other HDD, where you stored the copy of your backup. Also if this is done, make sure, that the external device is configured as the only backup location. If it is not, then the next run of RnR Backup will create another backup on your local HDD.
Although the above description is acomplishing, what you are about to do, if I were you I would do it following way:
I would delete all the backups , that you have, so that I have a free space. Make sure, that you have aon your system, only what you neeed and want to have. Configure RnR to store a backup only on the external HDD, or network share, or whatever else and start a backup creation.
This last description is because I always want to be 100% sure, that all is fine and will work also n the future on 100%. Becasue you know, copy does not equal to new backup creation. Don't take it that serious, it's just that I'm suspicious.
Cheers

Rescue and Recovery will not open

I wanted to back up my system to an external hard drive after finding out that it hasn't been backed up in over 200 days even though when prompted periodically , I select the option to "back up now." However, it seems that neved did back up. When I tried to run Rescue and Recovery (4.21) from Start - All Programs - ThinkVantage - Rescue and Recovery, nothing happenend. I restarted my computer and this message came up when it rebooted :
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
"Runtime Error!
C:\Program Files\Lenovo\Rescue and Recovery\rrpservice.exe
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.
Does anyone know how to fix this?

I do not recall 100% but I think I got a very similar error message, only worst situation. I had to replace HDD because the original HDD crashed. I installed a new HDD and when I went to re-store with the ORGINAL IBM LENOVO RnR + Product CD's, 7 in all, I got something like you got. I called Lenovo and someone in the service department told me that because my T60 was out of warrantly I needed to buy a new set of CD's ! Interesting hey, I told him that the Original CD's that came with the T60 had corrupted files and this from day 1. Anyway, long story short NO WIN XP as of yet. Good thing there is UBUNTU Linux. Good luck with issue.
===============================================
Current : T60 Type 1951-52U 2GB Kingston (COA WIN XP-P)
Past : T23, T41p, X40, X41t, X61s
===============================================

N200 Rescue and Recovery 4 does nothing

My girlfriends N200 laptop has stopped booting into Windows XP, it just hangs on the splash screen, and when booting into safe mode, the last file loaded is mup.sys.
I have tried booting into the Recovery console, however, it gets to the 'Rescue and Recovery 4' splash screen and doesn't do anything.. I can move the mouse but that's about it. I've tried numerous keys to try and kickstart it into doing something, which does not help..
I've also tried booting from my Windows XP CD to try and get into recovery console so that I can run chkdsk, however, it displays the message that no HDDs were detected and my only option is F3 to exit, and reboot.
She has alot of work on the laptop which is important so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I would pull the hard drive and place it in an external
usb enclosure.
Copy the important files off of it if possible.
You may not get it to boot again with out re installing windows,
or hard drive may be damaged.

Rescue and Recovery stalling when searching for system settings.

Being a project manager, I like to back up my laptop regularly. As such, having the Rescue and Recovery set up to do this automatically is a God send.....well that was before April 2010.
For some reason, when I start the Backup routine, it brings up the window that shows the progress and then another pop-up over that indicates that the program is looking for system settings. And that is where it stays. The only way I am able to cancel out of it is to shut down the computer.
I have a T500 laptop running XP SP3, ThinkVantage 6 and Rescue and Recovery 4.
I have an external hard drive which I have used for a number of months for this type of backup. It stopped working after an update of the ThinkVantage software. Sorry, can't tell you which update but it would have taken place between April 12 and May 12.
Has anyone had the same issue and can someone please help.
Pete

Hi,
although I have not seen this situation in the last time, but can you tell me, whether the USB HDD is the only place/store location, where you are storing the RnR backups?
In case you are storing the backups also on the local HDD, then please disconnect the USB HDD and try to store the backup only on the local HDD, whether this will work.
Please also try to check the Windows Event log, whether you will see there any note about RnR, or start debugview whether it will notice anythign. Also another thought press ALT+TAB if it is not possible, that there is some background window open.
Cheers

Issues with a T61 harddisk, UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME, cannot also get in the Rescue and Recovery

Dear Lenovo Support Community,
I have a T61 with XP pro on it. This is the history of my harddisk problems with it:
(the harddisk is HDD0 Fujitsu MHW21160BJ G1 and everything in laptop (HW and SW) are same as the factory sold one)
1. Unfortunately I had not made any recovery cd/dvd when the computer was healthy
2. Some time ago, after a crash, and during the chkdsk in the following boot up, harddisk showed 12kb bad sector
3. Due to more crashes and not being able to login once, went to rescue & recovery and only recovered OS to an old and healthy state. Kept my data, lost all the new programs installed but got the OS fine and running. --> I guess the bad thing that may have happened is that recovered OS may have used those bad sectors as well, but this is just a guess.
4. Problems, slow downs, the 12kb bad sector, issues kept coming back every couple or few weeks. Repeated the rescue and recovery OS installations another two times.
5. Few days ago, all was good, but needed to restart, but this time a blue screen came up with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. This screen comes up even if I try to go into safe mode, with networking, or even with only DOS prompt.
6. Tried to go to rescue and recovery (version 4), it took a really long time and was telling me that something wrong with the file \minit\setupapi.log and after a long long time that it got in the page for rescue and recovery, it was not doing anything by clicking on any of the buttons.
7. Took the hard out, connected it through an external enclosure to another computer, the main drive could not be read at all, I/O error, not distinguishable.
8. But the SERVICE drive was understood and I could even run chkdsk /F F:\ on it and it repaired the file mentioned above (\minit\setupapi.log).
9. Put the hard back into T61, went to rescue & recovery, this time the error on the file was not showing up, but since the step #8, I have not been able to get pass the initial screen of rescue & recovery. It doesn't go in at all.
10. Found it through Google search, the famous post on this forum about fixing the Master Boot Record. Got the little program, burned on a CD, went through all of its steps, finished as described in the famous thread, but I am not sure if it has been any help to me so far.
11. In few other occasions, connected the hard through the external enclosure to another computer and found online and used programs like Disk Doctors Windows Recovery Data and EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard and was able to just read inside both NTFS main disk and FAT32 service disk (windows can also read the service disk but cannot read the main disk). Using the free version of EASEUS, I could even read and save my personal data since my last backup, so I am good to even format the T61 hard but still I don't want to give up on that.
12. While the lenovo harddisk is in it, in a restart went to BIOS (F1) and ran the harddisk diagnosis, It said: "Pass: Controller Diag, Error code 0000: Read verification failed". And after the "Test complete", it gave a red message in the middle of screen that "<<< An error was found. Call for service >>>"
13. As mentioned in #1, I don't have Lenovo's recovery Windows XP CD(s) for T61, but I have some other windows xp installation CD's, I thought I can put them in CD drive, boot up from CD, and try to recover or repair the windows, It seems that they tell me there is no harddisk in your computer!! When I press "R" to go to recovery console, it tells me: "Setup did not find any hard drives installed in your computer."
My questions for dear members of this forum are:
1. Can I recover my T61 harddisk with the above description? It is being read nicely with the recovery programs, so it should have not been damaged seriously. Please guide me to other things that I can try?
2. I can see and read the Service part of the drive from Windows (no recovery program needed) while connecting the drive through external enclosure to another computer. Can I run a program from the Service part of disk and make those T61 Recovery CD and DVD?
3. If I purchase the Recovery CD(s) from Lenovo, would they be doing any magic or help in my case described above?
4. Can I make recovery CD(s) from another T61 laptop and use them for mine?
Thanks all for reading my long post and helping me. God Bless.
Best Regards,
AL_K

Step One: Install windows
Step Two: run system update
Step Three: Your done (optionally have a beer and relax)
Sorry, step three was a bit of humor I added.
Actually these recovery CDs were produced before the first T61 was made, probably in 2006. The T61 line was replaced in 2008.
You can activate with the code on your COA, I've done it many times, just make sure you do a full (new) installation, not an upgrade, from an oem disc.
If you do end up using the original product recovery disc set, your steps are more like this...
1. Install disc one... wait 30-60mins
2. Install disc two... wait 30-60mins
3. Install disc three... wait 30-60mins
4. Install disc four... wait 30-60mins
5. Install disc five... wait 30-60mins
6. Install disc six... wait 30-60mins
7. Install disc seven... wait 30-60mins
8. Install disc eight... wait 30-60mins
9. download latest service pack for windows and install (over an hour)
10. Install (replace old version) system update and run.
11. go to windows update and update several years worth of patches and hotfixes. (1-4 hours)
12. kick back and have a warm beer and cold pizza, if there is any left after I finished hours ago and celibrated already.
Also, after going through all that, you've not only installed windows, then replaced nearly the entire operating system, but you've also used valuable harddisc space to make several redundant copies of the outdated files, drivers and apps.
Please understand, I'm not saying the recovery discs are a bad design, they work great, and back in 2006-7-8-9 I'd happily go through all that work, but today all the stuff on them is to old so it's futile to go through all that. It would be really nice if Lenovo updated the install discs, and we could download the latest version to use, but they basically just leave them untouched after the model line is released, so nothing on that disc is newer then about 2006.
I'll also add that both George and I have done this well over 100 times each, so we wouldn't be suggesting this if it wasn't the best option, but in the end you'll have a working system no matter which route you take to get there, so the only question to ask yourself is...
Do you like your beer cold and your pizza hot
Good luck, and enjoy your endeavours
ThinkPad W-510 i7-820QM(1.73-3.06GHz) Quad Core... ThinkPad T500, T9900, 8gb SSD...FrankNpad T-60p/61p (X9000 2.8ghz) 8gb SSD ips FlexView...ThinkPad T-61p (T9300 2.5ghz) 8gb ram...Thinkpad X-61 Tablet 4gb ram...ThinkPad A-31 (1.9ghz P4 1.5gb ram)

Rescue and Recovery Won't Open on My R61i Laptop

Computer: 2008 Lenovo R61i Laptop with Windows XP, SP 3, 2 GB RAM, Intel Duo Core processor, 34 GB free on the hard drive
I had been wondering why my 160 GB hard drive was filling up even though I only have 10 GB of documents, photos, and videos saved, so I downloaded a little program called windirstat, and it told me that 50 GB was being used for RRbackups. Google told me what that is, and I opened it and checked to see how many backups were there (it said 5, counting an initial "basic" backup). I attempted to delete the newest one, but I can't tell if the process finished, and now I can't get Rescue and Recover to even open. I have defragged my hard drive, I have tried it in SAFE MODE, nothing works.
Here are my questions and additional info:
Is the initial "basic" backup where the backup of the Windows XP operating system is located? (I'm guessing that if the answer is "yes," then I don't want to delete that backup.) The size of this backup is 36 GB.
If so, could that backup be moved to an external hard drive and still be usable?
I also have Go Back (keeps a compressed image of my hard drive on the same drive for restoration of files and reverting the hard drive to a previous status). I have used this program for years and would rather use it that Rescue and Recovery for incremental backups because it's automatic and updates more often.
I also now use Carbonite, so I may need to rethink how I should use R & R and GoBack.
I'm thinking that I would like to keep the R&R initial back for Windows files but tell R&R to not to any more backups, then continue to use GoBack and Carbonite.
The primary problem at the moment is that R&R won't open at all, so I can't delete any backups and I can't tell it to stop trying to do incremental backups. HELP!
Thanks in advance,
Jim King

Hi,
can you please describe, how did you tried to delete the RnR backup? Using GUI, or manually in the RRbackups?
NOTE: The files stored in the RRbackup are encrypted and each file has also a metadata file, that conatins the informations on the purpose of that one file and some other usefull informations for RnR so that the restore can work.
Here are the answers on your questions:
1) If I understand it correctly, then the answer is YES. In case you have placed all the RnR backups localy, then the basic/initial backup and also the other incremental backups are stored exactly in the RRbackups folder.
2) YES, you can move it, BUT not manually. You need to use the RnR GUI to copy/move the backup on a network drive, or USB HDD. You can read more about this option in the Manual for RnR (sorry I don't want to describe it in here, as this is a bit longer description). So please review following guide:
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/rnr43dg.pdf
Page 61 describes this process using the rrcmd.exe utility.
3) I think, this is just a note
4) same here
5) In this case, it's of course possible to keeep just the original/inicial backup. In case you don't want to do any other backups, then you just make sure, that you dissable the scheduler of RnR and don't do any other backups.
6) For this situation, the crucial point is, what did you deleted in the RRbackups. However, the first point, that I would do is to reinstall, or repair RnR. NOTE: Please use the same package, or the package, that is stored on your system. From Add/REmove programs.
Please let me know, if you have any add questions to this situation.
Cheers

Rescue and Recovery 4 DOES NOT RESCUE/COPY LARGE FILES?!

Hello all,
Thank you in advanced for helping me out/any helpful advice you may have.
System:
Windows XP Professional
T61
4 GB RAM
2.50 Ghz Dual Core Intel Processor
120 GB Hard Drive
140m nVidia Quadro video card (256 MB available memory I believe)
Problem Summary:
I ran into the unlucky computer problem of having a Microsoft.net framework addon for Firefox 3.5.3 result in a fatal interaction leaving me unable to boot up in both safe and normal mode. If you do have this addon, please uninstall it NOW, so that it does not happen to you. There is no current fix or patch for it as far as I know. Luckily, I have the (formerly) fantastic Rescue and Recovery 4 to backup my files and fix things.
So in sequence of what I did:
Tried several different attempts to fix problem to no avail (via google searches on the Rescue and Recovery Browser)
Decided that it would be best to just reformat the drive and start a clean install.
I had not done a real back up recently (several months due to my own carelessness and being busy).
I chose to do a full factory restore using the 'Rescue My Files' option, since I had never done a backup using the included Lenovo Software, I usually just ran my own manual ones in Windows.
To be on the safe side, I just decided to transfer my entire hard drive directory 'C:' to my 500 GB External Western Digital Hard Drive. I know I didn't really NEED all the files (like program files I would just need to reinstall anyway). I just wanted to return my computer to how it was as fast as possible.
Rescue and Recovery registered as copying all my data (rougly 50-60 GB) of data to my external USB Hard Drive.
I then unplugged my External USB Drive From the computer once it said it was complete. Rescue and Recovery proceeds with the factory restore.
Things are going well, factory restore is successful, no problems yet.
Once Windows was functional again and I had remade my usernames and settings just as it was before the crash, I plugged in my External HD again to restore my files.
Every file that I copied was there EXCEPT FOR MY MOST IMPORTANT ONES. It appears the directory, 'C:\Documents and Settings\Justin\My Documents'
AND
'C:\Documents and Settings\Justin\Desktop'
DID NOT COPY. I DID A DOUBLE CHECK, and the program said that all files had transferred successfully and I saw the directories on the USB Hard Drive in the Rescue and Recovery View. (I did not do a double check on another windows computer with my USB Hard Drive, however as I did not have access to one at the time and I was trusting in the Lenovo software, which did actually manage to rescue all the files, except for my most important ones.)
Is there anyway way that:
That because these files were so large (probably account for 50% of all data copied to my external USB Drive or 10-15 GB a piece), that the Rescue and Recovery file simply "passed over them"? The other files appeared to copy perfectly fine.
There was an error with the program, like a file size limit cap that Rescue and Recovery cannot surpass so they were just skipped over?
My own carelessness? Are all the root files not selected when you choose the entire 'C:' Drive as a directory? I did just choose to copy/rescue the entire 'C:' Drive and everything else (besides my two most important files) seemed to copy over so I do not beleive that this is the case.
I did not individually, select each file in the 'C:\Documents and Settings' because I assumed that it would select each of the root files within it. (Is that not the case?)
That the files are 'hiding' somewhere due to their large size?
Most importantly of all:
IS THERE ANYWAY THAT I CAN RECOVER MY DATA? There is about 2 years worth of photos, music, documents, etc. that I would like to have back that I do not have a recent back up of.
If anything, does anyone know WHY this happened? It was my understanding that Lenovo Rescue and Recovery was some of the best software for emergency crashes out there. And now it has failed me miserably. I'd at least like to know why it happened so that I may not repeat my mistake (or put too much faith in Lenovo) for the future.
I've run some data recovery software but I know it will not recovery all the files that I once had in their state before my hard drive was reformatted back to factory settings.
Thank you,
-nofeet3
Justin

Hello , and ARGH !
I AM HAVING THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM RIGHT NOW !
If anybody could help this would really be appreciated .
Here is the story
Lenovo SL500
Windows XP SP3 I think
Specs maybe not too important
My computer has some corrupted file and will not boot in normal or safe mode . When I try to do either , it starts booting , but before it finishes the load-up-windows screen , it displays an error message which says
" lsass.exe - System Error
the endpoint format is invalid "
and then goes no further , and the machine simply restarts itself again and would do this indefinitely if I didn't stop it .
SO when it starts booting and shows the Lenovo Logo , I press the Lenovo Help/Tool Button to enter Rescue and Recovery [not sure what version it is , I cannot find information within it] and it gives me the option to Rescue files before recovering the system . I have the same problem as Nofeet3.
It rescues all the small files
BUT WILL NOT RESCUE ANY OF MY IMPORTANT FILES
CERTAINLY IT DOES NOT RESCUE ANYTHING BIG [or bigger than roughly 2mb]
It rescues picture files BUT WILL NOT RESCUE MUSIC FILES !!
It may not even rescue bigger picture files , but I haven't noticed any pictures it has not copied since I can't go through ALL my picture files to see exactly what it has / hasn't copied.
However , not a single music file is copied.
It will NOT show up on the hard drive . What is strange , is when I try to plug the hard drive back in to try and copy the music files again , as I tried it a few times , it asks me if I would like to Write these files over the files already there , as though it has already copied. I check the hard disk , and these fils have definitely NOT copied onto the Disk . They are nowhere to be found .
I don't think the files are hiding , but if they are , maybe somebody could tell me where.
I suspect though that Rescue and Recovery has "recorded" the files as having been copied , some kind of record , EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVEN'T !! Or if they have , they are absolutely invisible . WEIRD !
nofeet3
It is NOT because you selected the whole C drive , and is not due to any carelessness on your part. I have selected all files individually , and have tried time and time and time again , when I plug the ext hard drive into my other laptop to see if the files copy , they don't . I have tried this over and over and over again desperately all today , it is not working , even going so far as to select individual files rather than bigger directories to try and transfer in smaller in smaller batches ,just in case it couldn't handle large transfers all at once . That is not the case either . It just simply will not transfer files roughly bigger than 2mb . NO MUSIC !! THIS IS VERY FRUSTRATING !!
I am not sure at present whether this program can rightly be called "Rescue and Recover". It is one of the main reasons I selected Lenovo , and this is not a good demonstration of it's abilites at all .
PLEASE HELP ME !!
ANY HELP WOULD BE HIGHLY APPRECIATED !!
Thanks so much in advance for any help anybody can give , and best regards ,
Carl .

Rescue and recovery wiped out my external hdd

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