For Recovery Media, what is "boot media" and "data media"

[alexx]

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job012 wrote:

Hello, I selected just the checkbox for the boot media and the cd got burned succesfully, now that I wanted to burn the data media it pop ups a window that says: the files requiered by this programm cannot be found. To restart the computer, can I use only the boot disk? what am I losing by not having the the data media cd?

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I'm hoping someone can answer this as I did a search in the Thinkpad E520 pdf user manual for "Lenovo Factory Backup" and found nothing useful. So I continued to make the recovery DVD and then it asked about a "data" DVD. Since the pc is brand new it doesn't have any "data" to be backed up yet, but reading this thread makes me think that when Lenovo talk about "data" they are meaning something totally different.

Searching the manual again for "recovery media" finds a little more, but I still doesn't tell me how many CD/DVD I will need and what each one will contain.

Inspecting this first DVD shows a hidden BOOT folder, a small hidden file BOOTMGR and a 300MB file WINRE.WIM so I'm guessing that isn't the whole Windows 7 operating system and what Lenovo refer to as "data" is actually the Windows Operating System (or some of it).

[alexx]

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shunter wrote:

i made the factory recovery disk to USB stick rather than a disk, stupidly.  

can i just copy the files to a disk ? 

does that other disk have to be bootable? if so, is that easy to do?   or could one boot from the rescue media disk made in advanced rescue and recovery and then use the factory recovery disk, for example ?

the size is just 703mb which seems quite small for a windows7 backup - does that sound right !!

many thanks

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I'm led to believe that the process for booting a CD/DVD and for booting a USB drive is slightly different and you can't just copy the files. In the Linux world people use SYSLINUX for bootable drives and ISOLINUX for bootable CD/DVD and these are not quite the same. There is more to it than just copying files over.

There are a number of methods / programs available to convert a bootable iso (CDROM image) into a bootable USB (e.g. www.pendrivelinux.com ), but I think the reverse is rare.

Regarding your 703 MB is that your total?

In my case there was a bootable CD/DVD and 3 x Recovery Media DVD required, so 703 MB seems too small to me.

[aistec1]

Hi Josh,

I wish I had read your post yesterday, about point number 1, you can only do this ONCE!!!

The first time I did it, I was told I could not  use DVD for the first disk, so I cancelled. Then the second time I got a CD for the first disk and when I inserted a DVD for the 2nd disk, I was told again I could not use DVD!!! But I only had a few CDs on hand and I was not sure whether those would be enough, so I cancelled again. The 3rd time I thought maybe I could try it on a USB drive first just to see how much space it really needed. But, but... the system hung during the 3rd time and after I forced it to restart, I couldnt' access that function any more!!! How stupid is that!? Now I'm left with a start-up disk only!

The space on the "Lenovo_Recovery" is still there. I'm wondering whether there is any way I can activate the procedure again? Can anyone or the moderator advise?

Thanks,

Alex

[zoltanthegypsy]

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aistec1 wrote:

Hi Josh,

I wish I had read your post yesterday, about point number 1, you can only do this ONCE!!!

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The space on the "Lenovo_Recovery" is still there. I'm wondering whether there is any way I can activate the procedure again? Can anyone or the moderator advise?

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This might work for you: Boot Media

Z.

[stuporglue]

"The first time I did it, I was told I could not  use DVD for the first disk"

It actually says you can't use DVD-RAM. As noted by other people here non DVD-RAM DVDs work (DVD+R, DVD-R). DVD-RAM is a different type of DVD that apparently doesn't work with this backup process.

[Jidong]

Hi,

I have made the boot media and data media separately on CDs .But when I use the boot cd and want to recover my T410s to factory state,it prompted me to insert the disk1. I inserted the disk1, then it prompted me to insert disk2.Then I did, until the last disk. Then told me that it can't find the recovery.ini file. I checked the disk, there is the recovery.ini file,but in the factoryrecovery dictory. What's wrong with my disks?