Creating backup / restore disks for Lenovo Ideapad S9e

Having not received a recovery disk containing the operating system, for my Lenovo Ideapad S9e (DVDs cost less than 50p so there’s zero excuse for Lenovo not including) it seemed to fall to me to create it. Unfortunately Lenovo doesn’t even include software to create restore disks, unlike other companies, such as Toshiba for example.

Maybe it’s simply because Netbooks don’t contain CD/DVD drives, but as other companies supply them, I’m tempted to just believe that Lenovo are cheapskates!

Hunting around their support site, seemed to suggest that you could buy the, but they actually recommended using their own software called Rescue and Recovery, so I downloaded that. Installation was a breeze, and initial perusing of the program names seemed to suggest that it was exactly what I was looking for…how wrong could I be!

I connected up my external DVD burner (make sure your netbook is plugged into the mains, you don’t want the battery to run out while you are burning), followed the prompts of the software, and inserted my first DVD.

One minute later the disk was burnt!

Hmm, I thought, that didn’t take very long at all, to create a backup of my entire install, and a quick check showed that the Rescue disk I’d created, simply booted into the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery environment. It was useless without creating a backup of the hard disk first. I then had to start again, only this time I opted to create a backup of the entire hard disk.

The first thing this procedure does, is create the exact same disk as I’d created earlier, so that was one disk wasted. The software then created a backup of the hard disk, and prompted me to insert a disk to burn to.

The burn process then failed at 19%.

Next at 22%, third at 16%, and the fourth at 33%.

Subsequent testing of the writer and disks, seemed to suggest that it was either the software or the netbook that was at fault.

Never mind, I thought, at least I can still use the One Key Restore, except it wasn’t listed in my program files. Rebooting the machine and frantically pressing F11 did nothing either. I then booted from the rescue DVD that I’d created earlier, figuring that it would see the hidden partition, and re-install the software that way, but no joy. The so called recovery disk only sees it’s own backups from what I can tell. Had I uninstalled the OKR during my cull of the crap that Lenovo pre-installed? Did the Rescue and Recovery software remove it? Was it ever actually installed?

To be honest any of those is a possibility, but it was pointless crying over spilt milk, it was time to call Lenovo support.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

What a waste of time.

Despite the reference to restore disks on the Lenovo support site, the tech support said that it didn’t exist outside of Tier 1 (whatever that means). Twenty minutes of press this, click that, remove the battery etc, and the technicians final idea was to get some hard disk cloning software, and backup my hard disk myself. What a joke. While I can do that, I don’t see why I should have to hunt down, and probably have to buy, some more software just to create a safety net, that should have come with the machine in the first place!

When I asked the tech support why the manual showed how to replace the hard disk, when this would mean losing the operating system, with no easy way to restore it, the phone line went dead. At this point I resolved to never buy another Lenovo product, ever again in my life, and to discourage anyone else from ever purchasing their hardware.