S10e users, careful how you back up

Question

Hi folks, first post for me on here. Found this forum after running into trouble with my S10e, ie no recovery program, or at least no access to it!.
This may be of help to us in Europe who don't have recovery disks supplied with their Lenovos.
Trouble started when the S10e was used to do some work on a corrupt 3.5" hard drive from a PC, attached to the S10e via a USB caddy.
The 3.5" hard drive needed partitioning / reformatting, so Partition Magic was run to do the job.  A message came up saying that the drive parameters were incorrect and needed changing / reparing. Expecting errors on the attached drive anyway, I clicked 'ok' and 'apply changes'. Unfortunately, Partition Magic was actually referring to Lenovo's hard drive, not the attached 3.5" drive, and made changes to the S10e!. Immediately I got a blue screen. It rebooted ok, and Windows was running fine. On trying to find out what had happened, I tried to open Partition Magic again, but the program wouldn't allow it as the S10e's disk architecture was now corrupt.
Lenovo's recovery program (f11 etc) would not load.  Fortunately, I had used the software Paragon Drive Backup Personal Special Edition (a cut-down version of the Professional edition) to make a full HD backup about a week previous, and this has got me out of a lot of trouble with a full HD recovery.
Now the interesting bit: Partition Magic is still showing the S10e's  drive as having incorrect drive parameters, and wants to change it. Obviously I haven't allowed this.
Paragon's software (version as above) shows everything (disk, partitions) as ok, and allows a full HD backup. I have tried a couple of backup / restores to an attached USB drive, and everything works fine. (Only thing I have found different is that the recovery partition is no longer 'hidden', and now listed (and accessable) in 'My Computer' as Drive D).
As the Paragon's cut down 'Special Edition' doesn't allow an actual disk-to-disk copy/clone, the Professional Edition was installed to do this. As I have a spare 160gb 2.5" sata and a sata docking station, this would make a full disk copy easier, or so I thought. The 'disk copy' of this 'Professional' edition is also saying that the Lenovo's HD architecture is incorrect, and showing the partitions as faulty.  However, re-running the cut down version shows everything as ok!.
I think anyone who wants to back up their S10e system (and without recovery disks, they need to) have to look very carefully at what software they use for the job.
If any of the programs you use ask if you want to change the disk's structure at all, back out of it straight away.
I've used Partition Magic numerous times over the years with no problems, but there's something about the way the S10e's drive is set up that it doesn't like. (Neither does Paragon Pro).
I'm sure some of the techs on the forum will have a better idea of whats going on, but for the ordinary guy who just wants to do the right thing and back up their system, please be careful!.

Answer 1

I understand that everything on the iPhone is backed up when you sync.
Everything on your iPhone is not included with your iPhone's backup.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766
There isn't much of a reason to include your iPhone's backup with your computer's backup.
If something happens to your computer, after the problem is resolved if all data on your computer's hard drive must be restored from your computer's backup, the first time you sync your iPhone with iTunes on the restored drive, your iPhone's backup will be created by iTunes as the first step during the sync process. Or you can control-click on the name of your iPhone in the iTunes source list and at the menu window that appears, select Back Up.
More than likely some of the data on your iPhone included with your iPhone's backup will have changed since you restored your computer's data from your computer's backup anyway.