Advice towards securing recovery media - X120e

[rlpaper]

Three attempts at burning factory recovery media for my X120e failed on verifying at 70% with an unexpected error (rc=9). On cursory inspection, the DL-DVD's seem to have finished the burn, but I don't particularly want to test that theory on my system.  The recover.ini file in /recovery/ lists the OS as WIN732, which does not match the OS for my CTO system. Is this normal? I'm wondering if a) I have bad media or b) the wrong recovery partition was loaded on my system. Tech support tells me they can't help me because my external dvd drive is not Lenovo-branded. My options seem to be:

1) Buy a Lenovo external DVD drive (~ $80) and see if it does the trick, if it does not it should fall under warranty as it's not a third-party drive this time.

2) Order a Lenovo Recovery disk from support (~$45). This should do the trick.

3) Buy another batch of blank DVD's and see if it helps, if not go with 1) or 2).

I'm a bit hesitant to order a Recovery disk right away, nor am I particularly in the market for a bulkier DVD drive. This would especially be the case if the cause of the error is a bad recovery partition,  as I feel this should fall under warranty.

Any advice as to how to proceed? More details can be provided as needed.

Kind Regards,

RL

[andyP Community SuperMod · Accepted solution]

Hi rlpaper, welcome to the forum,

if you happen to have a spare hard drive which you can use for testing purposes, (all data on it will be deleted), could you maybe try testing the discs you have created by using them to install the drive?  It's also a good way be be 100% sure the discs work.

Another suggestion, and this is my own private theory, could you try again using CD-R and DVD-R media, no + or DL media?

Regards

[rlpaper]

Hi Andy,

Unfortunately I only have one HDD at my disposal - my machine's. I assume the factory image is limited to my machine, so the only drive I could possibly free would likely not be of any use (by replacing a X41T's drive with an SSD). I would only consider purchasing one other drive for my system, a Super Talent CoreStore MV, but that'd be boot blocked by the BIOS. Until I can get more info on how feasible it is to VHD boot into it, or chain boot from my main drive, I'm not likely to buy (and upgrade to W7 Ultimate). I get the feeling that the chances of doing a factory restore on a pcie ssd that's not bootable might be slim.

I do have some regular size DVD-RW blanks. That sounds better than trying to figure out if a 1.8" IDE drive could be made to work on my machine. I'll keep you posted.

The OS variable name in the .ini file still irks me, however. I don't want to be caught abroad with the wrong factory restore image (W7 32-bit  vs. 64 Pro).

Thanks for the prompt reply!

Kind Regards,

 -R

P.S. I did manage to burn my last Windows backup on two DL-DVD's from the same batch without problem.

(The drive is a Samsung SE-S084D.)

[rlpaper]

Alright, using two DVD-RW's instead of one DL-DVD-R worked. 

RCD_AppCD0/recovery/recover.ini has:

[SETTINGS]
type=product
mode=cbd
OS=Win732
Version=9.0
disk=1
islast=0
totalsize=4135799296
cdsetsize=7653125280

& RCD_AppCD1/recovery/recover.ini:

[SETTINGS]
type=product
mode=cbd
OS=Win732
Version=9.0
disk=2
islast=1
totalsize=3517325984
cdsetsize=7653125280

VS 

[SETTINGS]
type=product
mode=cbd
OS=Win732
Version=9.0
disk=1
islast=1
totalsize=7653125280
cdsetsize=7653125280

 Makes me wonder whether it's a software limitation or a quirk of my DL-DVD media.

I'll have to figure out a way to check if the image is for Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. Thanks for the help!