Hello folks,

I recently bought a T42 (2373-4WU) with a 40gig HD. I am trying to create a new partition for storing my data and also trying to reclaim space from the hidden recovery partition (HPA).

I went into the BIOS and disabled the recovery partition. But I'm unable to see the HPA in "My Computer' or windows explorer even after I do that. I repeated the process several times just to be sure, but to no avail.

Does anyone have an idea as to what might be wrong?

thanks.

I think you won't see the partition in explorer (maybe becasue it uses different filesystem). But after you disabled the partition in BIOS, you can safely remove the partition in Disk Management (Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management)

Thanks. Perhaps that is the case but the information in this document
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/access_ibm_en/hpa_aibm.pdf and also step 10 of this document http://www.4saad.com/WhatsNew/Fresh_XP_Install/Step10.htm seems to suggest otherwise.

Any further ideas?

Using Partition Magic you can reclaim the space occupied by HPA. Be aware that after you re-claim the space your HPA will be gone and you cannot reinstall the factory installed system.

By using Partition Magic you don't need to reformat the whole drive to reclaim the HPA space and to partition your drive.

Great! That was just the answer I was looking for. Iwas just about to do the whole operation described here but I guess that a fresh install of Windows probably wouldn't do me much good - or would it?

At least the approach of using PartitionMagic seems *much* easier, and if I understood you right here, I wouldn't need to fool around with the BIOS or anything, right?

To delete the HPA, install Partition Magic. Then re-boot and go into the BIOS settings to set the HPA to "Disable". There are 3 options there - Secure, Normal & Disable. Save settings and go to Windows.

From windows, fire-up Partition Magic. You should be able to see the "unused space".

There are a number of ways to see the HPA when set to "Disable". You can also use FDISK to "see" the claimable space.

There is also a utiliy from IBM, I think its called the HPA utility or something. You can also use that to delete the HPA. I have downloaded this and run the program just to see but I did not delete the HPA. For me the HPA is still worth retaining in my system, given that there are plenty of USB HDD in the market.

I just went ahead and didn't do anything in the BIOS at all- I just deleted the hidden partition (using PartitionMagic) and then expanded the primary one so it covered the space used up by the service partition. Seems to work great!