Lenovo - Does One Button Recovery Work?

This is part of the thinkvantage tools that they got from IBM when they purchased the hardware division.

I played with these tools a few years ago and was not happy with them. However since then I know they have continuously improved on them and I’m sure Lenovo has made them better.

I believe the one touch recover is a newer version of the “Rapid Restore” application which in theory was very good (The one time I saw it it took forever).

From what I can remember it creates incremental snapshots of your system over time and allows you to restore to a specific spot. Sort of like System Recovery in XP but better. The only other thing is that it uses about 1/3 of your HD space so if your short on space you might not like it.

Again… this is information that i remember from previous versions. I always had a hard time getting my hands on the latest versions. I would also like to know how well it works now.

Don’t count on it to bail you out if you’re on the road and you’ve hosed your machine.

Oh, it recovers your system alright…all the way back to the base image the IT guys gave you….right before you loaded everything valuable that you need to actually get your job done. And it took almost an hour to re-load the system.

It “might” beat having to ship your laptop back to corporate to re-image the blasted thing, but there MUST be a better way of restoring your applications, profile and data without this much pain….ugh!

Unfortunately, it didn’t recover my presentation either. I’ll never hit the road without a backup of my preso on a USB drive EVER again.

I have a fairly new Lenovo T61p. My understanding is that it restores back to your last backup point. This means that if you load it up with stuff you want to protect, you need to run a backup right after that. I’m basing this on the setup message I got from my computer that asked me if I wanted to do an initial backup. It then gave me the option of scheduling regular backups, which I setup for once a week. Your IT department may not have given you the option to mess with this. If that’s true, I would let them know why you need access to do your own backups. In addition, I would carry your data on a secure flash drive as a backup.

I can see where this could take a lot of hard drive space, but I do think there is an option to send the backup to a alternative location including DVD. I’m still in the process of transferring stuff from my old laptop and haven’t had a chance to mess with this any further. I’m reluctant to test the backup in case it doesn’t work as advertised.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Your thoughts are appreciated.

Heh Richard,
I hear you. BUT, and there is always a but somewhere, do you want to wait until you really need it, before testing it? Just a thought.

It’s easy for me to say, because it ain’t my stuff!

I just worked on a T61p to clean up malware.

It works fantastic, you can restore to original factory image (hidden partition) or to your base/incremental.

Keep in mind that your base+incremental will take hard drive space, you can also save the base+incremental to another partition or harddrive if available.

Bad thing is if the base is infected with virus like this one was then every restore is infected. Once I had cleaned the system and put everything back in order I deleted the base and took a new snapshot as base. Restoring to a factory image was not an option because of all the programs and security functions including fingerprint database added since then.

Other problem was it did hang at times during backups, most likely due to malware still on system, if it does then it leaves the unusable image which can’t be deleted either thru windows or rescue and restore. Solution was to uninstall R&R and that will delete all base/incremental/bad images and recover harddrive space.

The other thing to keep in mind is to set the incremental to a reasonable level (I set it to 4), because base backup will be almost the same size as the data (13g window partition vs 9g base backup) and restoring an incremental either as a rejuvination/base restore may not get rid of virus as this function only overwrites certain windows files.

I liked this software so much that I tried to install it on other non-Lenovo systems unfortunately it won’t install.

I wanted to add that I’ve used ghost, drive image, acronis, bootit ng, linux, among others and in comparing R&R is pretty good.

Best way to access the program for restore/rejuvination/recover files is thru the thinkvantage blue button on boot, since it will reboot anyway once you’re done. Backups can only be done via windows.

Just remembered some other stuff, backup to another partition or harddrive just makes a mess of the drive, files and folders all over the place, I had to take all of the files/folders and put it in it’s own folder which I named Lenovo R&R, I guess for future saves/restore to the external I’ll have to reverse it and take it out of the folder must be because it boots as root from the external drive. You must specify drive letter to backup and can’t specify folders. (not a problem for me as I just need one backup)

The other irksome issue is that it installs a boot loader in the mbr that if for any reason is changed you will not be able to access R&R. (not a problem for me as it’s not mine). Haven’t tried from a rescue cd/dvd with a corrupted mbr so I don’t know about that part.

R&R should also have an option to limit incrementals to size rather than number of backups, otherwise you could run out of disk space if you have a lot of data. Oh yeah put in a warning of some type when you get close to using up all the harddrive.

Other than those issues I can see how the IT dept loves this program, for the normal users this is a great help.

Hello Rich,
Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. You have provided us with valuable information.
Regards, Ron

My girlfriend’s laptop(Y410) had a shit-ton of malware on it so I tried to use the one-button recovery. It only took about 10 minutes to complete, but after completion windows refuses to boot. It says I must insert the Windows Vista disc which Lenovo helpfully did NOT provide. Now I have to take it in somewhere to get it fixed. Thanks Lenovo!

I’ve got a Lenovo S10e. It’s a great machine, but I’m not terribly impressed with the One Touch restore, although that’s because it’s not a complete restore system.

I *thought* it was a button to restore Windows if you ever completely hosed the machine, but it actually isn’t. (At least not on the S10e). The main partition still has to be intact, because only some of the data required for the restore is on the hidden partition. (I just talked to Lenovo support and this is what they say).

In retrospect, my earlier conversations didn’t say that if I wiped the main partition, (leaving the hidden partition intact) that I’d be able to use the one touch restore, but they certainly didn’t say there was any limitation to the degree my partition could be hosed before One Touch wouldn’t work.

The upshot is that if you can’t use One Touch to restore an OS if you’ve tried a different OS even if the hidden partition is untouched. This is a pretty major flaw in my view, but so be it.

The other issue of course is that this means that if you wipe XP Home, you can’t reinstall it. The system ships without restore CD’s, (and has no CD-Rom in any case). Restore CD’s are available for $45.

In short, I think that the product is good, but their sales/marketing/support is piss poor. Fortunately for me, I’d rather use Windows 7 anyway.