Rescue and recovery...
Dodgy
I made the mistake of letting the thinkvantage software update rescue
and recovery, unfortunately it didn't like my thinkpad having a Grub
boot loader, and screwed it up.
After a battle I managed to get linux up and running, but windows was
well and truly mangled.
No worries thinks I, I have used the rescue and recovery regularly to
make backups of my windows config onto a usb harddrive, and I don't
mind loosing the linux as I just used it to play about with.
I even have the full set of rescue disks from IBM.
So I remove the drive, connect it via USB to my desktop and wipe it,
remove all the partitions, everything.
I put the 2.5" drive back in the R52, boot the rescue and recovery CD,
I tell it to restore from my big USB backup drive (which was connected
before I booted), it acts like there are no backups to use.
I copy the data to another USB with my desktop, and again, the
thinkpad can't see it.
I connect the backup USB drive to my desktop machine, set up DHCP,
share the drive, and even though rescue and recovery lets me map the
network shared USB drive, it can't see anything to recover from it!
So I think I'll just use the IBM supplied rescue and recovery software
to restore the machine to factory default.
It copies some files, reboots, asks for the supplemental CD, then asks
for CD1 and then goes "An internal error has caused this process to
fail".
Clicking "OK" gets a box up saying "Couldn't find a service Parition,
You must restart the process." (The spelling mistake is genuine).
It then asks for the supplemental again, then again complains about no
service "parition", then reboots.
So how exactly how are you supposed to do rescue and recovery onto a
new hard drive, which won't have a service "parition"?
So in summary...
1) Don't update your rescue and recovery is you have a custom boot
loader.
2) Don't rely on rescue and recovery to be able to do anything to your
thinkpad, including install to factory condition!
If anyone wants me, I'll be in the pub.
Dodgy.
--
MUSHROOMS ARE THE OPIATE OF THE MOOSES
Ogg
http://forum.thinkpads.com/. The problem isn't because you had grub and
multi-boot system. The problem is the update of R&R in general.
Appararently not all TP models are supported with newer versions of R&R.
Secondly, even if your new R&R was supported, your existing backups would be
useless. Inotherwords, newer versions of R&R are not backward compatible
with previous-release backups.
Too bad there doesn't seem to be a way to rebuild your system directly. I
haven't bothered to use R&R on my system for the reasons cited above. I
have a TP41p.
When you say that you "boot the rescue and recovery CD", is that an original
IBM supplied CD? or is it a fresh boot CD created when you did the regular
backups to your USB hdd ???
Try posting your dilema at http://forum.thinkpads.com/.
Dodgy wrote:
|| Rescue and recovery has trashed my R52. Thanks so much.
||
|| I made the mistake of letting the thinkvantage software update rescue
|| and recovery, unfortunately it didn't like my thinkpad having a Grub
|| boot loader, and screwed it up.
|| No worries thinks I, I have used the rescue and recovery regularly to
|| make backups of my windows config onto a usb harddrive, and I don't
|| mind loosing the linux as I just used it to play about with.
||
|| I even have the full set of rescue disks from IBM.
||
|| So I remove the drive, connect it via USB to my desktop and wipe it,
|| remove all the partitions, everything.
||
|| I put the 2.5" drive back in the R52, boot the rescue and recovery
|| CD, I tell it to restore from my big USB backup drive (which was
|| connected before I booted), it acts like there are no backups to use.
||
|| I copy the data to another USB with my desktop, and again, the
|| thinkpad can't see it.
||
|| I connect the backup USB drive to my desktop machine, set up DHCP,
|| share the drive, and even though rescue and recovery lets me map the
|| network shared USB drive, it can't see anything to recover from it!
||
|| So I think I'll just use the IBM supplied rescue and recovery
|| software to restore the machine to factory default.
|| So how exactly how are you supposed to do rescue and recovery onto a
Dodgy
waffled on about something:
>Sorry to hear that. I read about R&R horror stories and warnings in
>http://forum.thinkpads.com/. The problem isn't because you had grub and
>multi-boot system. The problem is the update of R&R in general.
>Appararently not all TP models are supported with newer versions of R&R.
>Secondly, even if your new R&R was supported, your existing backups would be
>useless. Inotherwords, newer versions of R&R are not backward compatible
>with previous-release backups.
>
>Too bad there doesn't seem to be a way to rebuild your system directly. I
>haven't bothered to use R&R on my system for the reasons cited above. I
>have a TP41p.
>
>When you say that you "boot the rescue and recovery CD", is that an original
>IBM supplied CD? or is it a fresh boot CD created when you did the regular
>backups to your USB hdd ???
>
>Try posting your dilema at http://forum.thinkpads.com/.
Yup, it's a real IBM supplied CD set!
I got them in for the boss a few months ago when his hard drive died
(he dropped it!).
It worked quite happily for him.
When I came to use it, things just didn't want to play ball... I
couldn't even get the damn thing to format back to factory supplied. I
think there must have been something left on the drive that it didn't
like, but given that I'd even done a low level drive wipe on it, I
have no idea what it could be.
I eventually got the machine up and running XP by using an genuine MS
XP CD. Once I got that installed I installed rescue and recovery and
got it to create me a bootable backup on an fresh USB harddrive.
Then I copied the RRBackup folder from my original USB harddrive over
the RRBackup folder on the new bootable recovery drive I had created.
Then I booted the machine from the original backup USB drive and got
it to recover! Yay!
Only little quirk was it obviously had backed up some of the MBR, so
when it tried to boot it tried to run GRUB which didn't exists any
more, so I had to boot off the XP CD again, get the recovery console
up and do FIXBOOT and FIXMBR.
But now it's up and running again!
What a battle!
Things I have learnt:
1) If you are going to rely on R&R to recover, make sure the backup
media is bootable
2) Even though R&R lets you create a backup onto a 2nd partition of a
USB hard drive, I don't think it can see this to do a recovery!
3) Always have a real XP disk to hand
4) Backup anything you really don't want to loose via a different
method, network share/CDR/DVDR
5) Don't mess about with the boot loader, get the XP one to load Linux
for you, don't just in ahead of it on the MBR or R&R throws all it's
toys out of the pram!