Recover new laptop with old laptop's data

[audiodroid]

My laptop was stolen. :-(

However I made frequent use of the recovery software, and used my external USB-harddrive for this matter.

Now I am about to purchase a new laptop...probably a new ThinkPad (that would also depend on this issue).

Can I use the restore-functionality of the recovery software to get the data of my stolen laptop, and copy it to the new machine? If so, how? I never had to restore anything, so I don't know about the options, functionality, etc. given by the lenovo recovery software.

Please let me know asap. As I said, it will have an effect on which Laptop I am going to buy in the next few days.

Cheers,

Audiodroid

[Maliha Community Moderator]

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audiodroid wrote:

Can I use the restore-functionality of the recovery software to get the data of my stolen laptop, and copy it to the new machine? If so, how? I never had to restore anything, so I don't know about the options, functionality, etc. given by the lenovo recovery software.

Please let me know asap. As I said, it will have an effect on which Laptop I am going to buy in the next few days.

Cheers,

Audiodroid

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Hi and welcome to the forum!

Sorry to hear about your loss , you should contact lenovo to notify them about this given if you still have serial number and 7 character product number with you, they will probably blacklist the notebook and hold it the next time someone tries to make use of warranty services.

As for recovery, any good recovery solution should have this option, however since I haven't used rescue and recovery much so I honestly can't say whether it will let you do this. 

Hope this helps.

[audiodroid]

Thanks for the reply.

I will see about the black list, that sounds like a very good idea.

And about the "rescue and recovery" feature, I would also belive it to have this feature, but I'd rather be 100% sure.

Can anybody (maybe from lenove) give a hint on this? Cannot be that complicated...

Or am I the only person in the world that actually used that software?

[audiodroid]

Okay with my last "request" on the ibm/lenovo support site I reported my laptop as stolen. We'll see what comes of that.

I also did some more research on this site (and google) trying to figure out if there is a solution to my recovery problem. It doesn't look good. If this is true:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Recovering-Rescue-amp-Recovery-backups-on-a-no...

then the likeliness of seeing any of my data sometime soon again depends on, if

1. I want to spend money on a new laptop which must be a Thinpad of similar type and
2. the recover actually works on a "similar" system (on evidence of that so far)

:-(

[andyP Community SuperMod]

audiodroid,

sorry to hear about your situation, not nice

Exactly which SL do you have? As I asked in the thread you linked to; did you create a boot disc or make the USB drive bootable?  Have you made any attempts at doing things which have failed?  Information like this will hopefully help members help you.

Thanks

[audiodroid]

Hello everyone,

let me give you an update of what is happening (and more detail about what has happened in chronological order:

1. I bought a ThinkPad SL300

2. I made frequent use of the Rescue and Recovery Software provided by Lenovo, backups are on my external USB-harddrive

3. My Laptop was stolen. :-(

4. I want to recover the data from my latest backup on the external USB-harddrive

5. I don't want to corrupt the backup data, 'cause then it is lost for ever, theirfore I try to get advice.

7. I contact the a) Lenovo Service, and b) I write about this issue in this forum, c) I search the web on this issue

8. The Lenovo service cannot help me at all, they just said. The advice was to go to a local PC-shop. :-(

9. So far this forum has also not helped me.:-( Only good to see that a few out of a million are showing empathy.

10. The only hint I got through searching the web and this forum, is:

• that I need to find another ThinkPad machine and try to access my backups (on the USB-harddrive) with that machine's rescue & recovery software or
• I can try to install the resuce and recovery software on a non-Lenovo laptop (I do have an old acer laptop) and cross fingers that it somewhat works on that machine so that I can access the backups. But I haven't found any feedback concerning this, and I am afraid I might crash that laptop and/or corrupt the backup data. :-(

[Maliha Community Moderator]

I like to offer some help, but I don't use Rescue and Recovery, it's my least favorite software next to Access Connections. However, I did some search and found this solved thread:- http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=303431, although OP's situation is different, but he/she was able to restore backups of previous system on a new thinkpad. Please use it as a reference only and be very cautious of the steps you take, also as far as I know RnR only works on lenovo systems. 

Hope this helps in some way. 

[audiodroid]

@Maliha: Thanks again for your help, your advises are the only glance of hope at this moment.

What's happening:

1. I send a request to the website, where I bought the laptop, and I am waiting for a reply from there. Maybe they can help
2. Of course I had a look at Maliha's link.
3. I have a friend, that has a ThinkPad. However he is living in another country. I have to see how big the backup-file is. If it is reasonable, I will try to send it to him, and see if he can access it with the help of the instruction found under "Maliha's link".

As you can imagine from what you can read above, I would still be grateful for more advise.

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ThinkPad: SL300 (NS6K5MH) [Vista]
Acer: TravelMate3200 [XP]

[andyP Community SuperMod]

Did you create a boot disc or make the USB drive bootable?

If you didn't, this is something which will need to be addressed in order to enable you to access the backups.

Thanks in advance

[audiodroid]

@Andy: No. I have no boot disc, and the USB drive is not bootable.

More updates on my progress:

My backup-files are too big to send to my friend via internet. Also I can't ask him to go through that crazy procedure to get to the backup files. :-/

From all I hear, trying anything on a none Lenovo machine is almost pointless.

So I am thinking of purchasing a new ThinkPad despite this aweful experience with the recovery software. As you can see below, my last ThinkPad was running on Windows Vista, the laptops you get these days ship with Windows 7. Might that be an extra hurdle to access the backup file? We'll have to see...

My plan is to follow the instruction that you can find following the link that Mahila posted above. However that thread is from 2007/8, so I would actually hope that there has been some improvement to the software to accompish such issues. But I guess not, otherwise somebody would know. Also I hope if there has been no improvement, then you hopefully can go through the suggeseted steps and actually get somewhere.

If anyone has more ideas or a more "up-to-date" suggestion, specially without using a Lenovo machine to access the backups, and that works he (or she) gets the "recovery reward of the year" from me, I swear. No seeriously...I am almost at the point where I would spend money to get those files back.

My worst nightmare would be, if I purchase that new laptop from Lenovo for the sake of getting my data back, and then I have to find out, that I still can't access those files. I can tell you that much already.

Anyway. Thanks for your help so far.

Audiodroid

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ThinkPad: SL300 NS6K5MH [Vista]
(Acer: TravelMate3200 [XP])