R&R backup on my external drive... can't reach preloaded files on external drive

[carl_lyn]

Hi forum - hope that you can help me here: 

I created a R&R on my external drive, which already contains all my files and documents from the last 2-3 years.

It installed the R&R succesfiully, but now when I connect the external HDD, I can only see the R&R cbd-drive files and not see any of all my folders and files that I had on the hard drive.

I didnt see any thing about R&R would delete existing files and the drive... how do I roll back in order to access my old files?..

really hope that you can help me, as the files are of great importance.

thank you in advanced!

[carl_lyn]

note:

I using a lenovo w520

The external HD shows that 500+ GB is used... so the files must be there somewhere...

[carl_lyn]

When i insert the USB Disk, Windows mounts cbd_drive (F.)

There are boot and factoryrecovery folders and usb.tag and winRE.wim files.

[carl_lyn]

Just read this:

02-10-2011 11:41 AM

jfatlenovo, welcome to the forum,

the difference is as follows; if you plan to create your backups using R&R to external network or hard drives the "boot media" will enable you to access these backups after booting from it. 

** Very important consideration; if you choose to make an external hard drive bootable this process will delete the files you already have stored on it - back it up first.

does this mean that my files are deleted????

I dont recall R&R ever to say anything about formatting / deleting existing files... this is terrible..

[someotherguy]

I don't know how to recover your files, but I don't think R&R did this.  It seems to me that you created factory recovery media on your USB HDD and answered "yes" to the following message box that was displayed:

That's the only way I know to end up with "cbd_drive" with a factoryrecovery folder...

[mwech]

so the same thing just happened to me on my brand new lenovo x220. what a complete disaster.

 I saved the recovery media and boot onto my existing external hard-drive and it erased everything else, including video too big to have saved anywhere else. I very carefully read every single panel that came up and read all the instructions in the user guide pdf. there was nothing that even hinted at loss of all my other data. boo, lenovo.

it seems this might be a good place for improvement as no other file added to an external hard drive would be expected to erase all existing files. this is an unexpected result and no logical warning is given in either the user guide or during the backup. what's worse, I can't make another copy of the media.

can I even use my external hard drive anymore or is it now as useless? 

 the program allowing me instant backup, etc is also erased. wow.