Making a usb stick with the Lenovo recovery partition bootable

[Flagone]

I got a Lenovo X201 on Friday and on Saturday I set about backing up the recovery partition onto a usb stick.

I inserted an 8gb usb stick and let it do it's thing.  After plugging the stick into the machine and trying to boot from it to test it works I got a message saying No Windows, or in other word the usb stick was not bootable.

After reading some forum messages one suggestion was the stick had to be formatted in fat32.  Fortunately I didn't just format it and try again as when I went back into the recovery partition backup software it gave me a rude message saying you have done a backup once so you are not allowed to do it again.

To me this seems quite pointless as I cannot see for what purpose I would want to use the Lenovo recovery partition other than on my computer but I assume it is something to do with a licensing restriction.

In any event after quite a substantial bit of my reading, of which there was nothing really on point, I stumbled across this thread and the message by the_solutor:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/X100e-Make-bootable-usb-stick-of-recovery-CD/t...

It correctly gave me the idea of using the Windows 7 bootable usb creator http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool to create a bootable usb, delete all files from it apart from the couple of boot files in the root then copy over to it the files the Lenovo partition backup program put on my other usb stick.  After doing this I am the happy owner of a bootable recovery usb stick (formatted NTFS by the way) so that I can install the original software back onto my hdd if it is corrupted or fails.  I have tested it with a spare hdd and it works fine. 

I don't know why the Lenovo program didn't work for me, but it appears other people have had the same issue.

I also know if I rang Lenovo they would probably send me recovery disks but I want a usb stick not disks as the X201 doesn't have a dvd drive. 

[bananaman]

Hi Flagone, and welcome to the Lenovo User Community!

Thank you for sharing how you solved this problem!

There's also a support document which describes how to prepare a USB stick to be factory recovery media:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-74246

[Flagone]

Hi bananaman thanks for your reply.  That support document would have been helpful before I made my one and only usb stick. 

I think Lenovo needs to make their installer program make the partition active, or at least give you a warning and instructions.

Thanks also for your kind welcome.

[bananaman]

Yes I agree. Hopefully they will update the procedure!

In the meantime your thread will help others.

[The_Solutor Retired Guru]

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In any event after quite a substantial bit of my reading, of which there was nothing really on point, I stumbled across this thread and the message by the_solutor:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/X100e-Make-bootable-usb-stick-of-recovery-CD/t...

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Glad my message helped.

BTW if the problem is the "not so smart" message you mentioned, the solution is really stupid:

Just look in the Q partition for the file service_done.ini open it and change the string done=1 to done=0, and launch the wizard again.

But pay attention!!! if your mbr / bcd environment is messed up: (working windows but no f11 function) the wizard will lead to an unbootable media, because the wizard uses the S paritions/mbr infos to build the first backup media.

In that case (afaik) there is no working solution from Lenovo (the usual rr floppy just restores the mbr but not the needed bcd settings), I found a way to restore the system in the original state and then reburn the  dvd/usb stick, but not to have the working restore media[s] w/o wiping the entire hdd.

So is mandatory to burn the cd/dvd or create the usb stick before doing anything else.

That said i explain what I did to recover the "no way out problem".

I think that can be useful for many many users.

If you are in the following situation

#1 F11 not working

#2 Q: an S: partition still present (btw there is an image of S: parition inside the Q: partition, in case of missing S parition's needed files, the image can be opened with 7zip)

#3 No factory restore media available (or not working media)

The solution I found is the following:

#1 Backup any data you want to preserve, and/or image your entire C: partition with Drive image, ghost, whatever.

#2 Create a vanilla Win Seven USB installation media with the tool already mentioned (test if it works before going to the next step)

#3 Rename the file winRE.wim (it's inside the S: partition) as boot.wim and overwrite the same file on the usb stick already prepared.

#4 boot from the USB stick  (the lenovo restore process will start instead of the usual Win seven installation)

At the end of the process your PC will be again in its factory state and F11 will works again, so follow the initial wizard and the first thing to do will be: burn the recovery media[s] !!!.

#5 restore the data or the entire C: partition

I hope this helps

Maybe there is a smarter way to do this but I haven't found one

[Flagone]

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The_Solutor wrote:

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BTW if the problem is the "not so smart" message you menyioned, the solution is really stupid:

Just look in the Q partition for the file service_done.ini open it and change the string done=1 to done=0, and launch the wizard again.

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I was just typing a message on how to find the service_done.ini file on the recovery partition but I just found it.

It is in the Q:/factoryrecovery/ directory.

Thanks for the tip.

[makanmel]

Can someone tell me how much space will be occupied by the Lenovo recovery partition on the USB stick?

I am thinking which USB stick size I need considering that I am going to have there another software needed for my work for case if something go wrong "in the field"...

Another way I think is to make full backup using Windows 7 backup tool. I believe it will be faster to restore working state?

Please share your thoughts.

[The_Solutor Retired Guru]

Just the recovery environment will needs less than 500MB, the complete restore will needs about 6,5/ 7GB.

So you must use an 8GB usbkey.

[makanmel]

Is there possibility to move the created image from the stick to DVD (8.5GB DL DVD)?

[jeddy]

Hi,

as I understand it this solution relies on the Windows 7 USB DVD Download tool.

I've used Roxio to Save the DVD image to my HDD as a .ISO file, however when I select this file from the tool I just get a message saying the selected file is not a valid ISO file and it won't let me progress.

Is this because I have a recovery DVD rather than a windows 7 install disk?

How do I get out of this please?

thanks,

Jeddy