Thinkpads Forum

can someone let me know if ibm is lying to me?
i have a x31, installed the new hitachi 7k100 100gig on it. i didn't buy it from ibm, and i don't think it is even sold for the x31. i'm trying to get the hidden partition on it, and sent it in to ibm, and they didn't do anything about it. i tried the recovery cd's, but it doesn't install the HPA, just ibm's windows installation.
some guy at ibm said it was cause the drive wasn't supported. but i'm not sure if that is truly the case. does anybody know any differently?
(i already formatted my old disk, put it in a photo storage device)

Look for '2010 error' in this forum and see if flashing new FW to the disk solves your problem, making it look IBM enough so that recovery installs the recovery partition on it. Or, pre-partion the disk to leave 8GB free and try to obtain an x31 recovery partition somewhere to lace on it. You may have to fiddle with the MBR as well.

The key point of making this work right is at the beginning of the recovery. Right after you boot to the CD, before you make any selections, you should see a screen that says something to the effect of "Your system initially had a sevice partition on it. Do you want to restore the service partition [Y/N]?"

If you don't see this, in other words if you get the screen where you select the option to put the operating system back on your machine, then it's not going to work. Stop and figure out what's wrong.

1 - Make sure that, in the bios, in the "Security" section, the predesktop area is set to enabled.

2 - Make sure that, in the bios, your cdrom drive is set to boot before the hard drive. Keep your finger away from that F12 key. I'm serious.

3 - Delete ALL the partitions on the drive.

When you reboot to the cd, you should get the Yes/No question.

How do you know it didn't install the HPA? After installation F11 didn't work?

marcos wrote:Look for '2010 error' in this forum and see if flashing new FW to the disk solves your problem, making it look IBM enough so that recovery installs the recovery partition on it. Or, pre-partion the disk to leave 8GB free and try to obtain an x31 recovery partition somewhere to lace on it. You may have to fiddle with the MBR as well.

i thought 2010 was only for the T series? this is X, and i never heard of that error for X.

croooowe wrote:How do you know it didn't install the HPA? After installation F11 didn't work?

well, it doesn't, and that's what ibm always says to check.
the way i did look is to see how much free space is left (i mean, unaccounted for space). if there's none, then there can't be a hidden partition

SeanM wrote:The key point of making this work right is at the beginning of the recovery. Right after you boot to the CD, before you make any selections, you should see a screen that says something to the effect of "Your system initially had a sevice partition on it. Do you want to restore the service partition [Y/N]?"

If you don't see this, in other words if you get the screen where you select the option to put the operating system back on your machine, then it's not going to work. Stop and figure out what's wrong.

1 - Make sure that, in the bios, in the "Security" section, the predesktop area is set to enabled.

2 - Make sure that, in the bios, your cdrom drive is set to boot before the hard drive. Keep your finger away from that F12 key. I'm serious.

3 - Delete ALL the partitions on the drive.

When you reboot to the cd, you should get the Yes/No question.

will try, then get back.
thanks

Well the main feature of the HPA is for Factory Restore purposes, but if you have the recovery discs anyway then it's no great loss. Update with the latest Rescue and Recovery and you'll have a PreDesktop Area back again.

People keep saying "update with the latest Rescue and Recovery, and HPA will return," but it didn't work for me. As I have the discs, I'm not weeping into my Red Bull.

Well it wouldn't be the same PDA area but you should get 'a' PDA again it will just be in it's newer form.

apparently, my dvd burner died on me (dumb matshita uj-810). so, i'm awaiting a new one. then, i will try restoring again

thanks
PS the reason i need the stuff on the hard drive is in case something happens to my disk, like corruption, and i need to restore and i don't have the base with me.

Nope. I got "missing operating system," and there were no new partitions (using Partition Magic let's one really see what's going on). YMMV.

Just to clarify...There is *no* 2010 error for the X31. So that cannot be the problem.

The Restore CDs should give you the option to create the restore partition if you so choose.

OK, so do you have your own recovery CDs generated from RnR or do you have Factory restore CDs?
And either way, how many do you have and what are they labled?
The restore CDs should create a new service partition by default at a clean restore. It will just be much smaller if they are restore CDs vs Factory Recovery Discs.

Why will it be smaller if you use the copied cds vs. factory set?, the only difference on my factory set is slipstreamed sp2, the partitions are similar in size when recovered from both, minus sp2.

Kyocera wrote:Why will it be smaller if you use the copied cds vs. factory set?

Good Question.

Since he is starting from a clean HDD he doesn't have the IBM_SERVICE partition there by default. Factory Restore CDs have all of the Recovery information for your entire preload on them which is copied straight from the Service Partition when you Create Recovery Discs. If you select to restore from them with no information on the HDD the first thing it does is rebuild the IBM_SERVICE partition and copy the preboot material back in. Then it reboots and dumps the factory contents from your Discs back into it. That would be your 3+GB service partition. If you created a standard set of Recovery Discs from RnR the default backup does not capture your Factory Recovery material. So on a bare system the first thing that happens is the service partition is rebuilt to house only the Preboot files (450+MB) and then restores the IBM_PRELOAD onto your OS partition. This is why they recommend to create a set of Factory Restore Discs shortly after starting up your system for the first time.

#of CDs made from R&R 7
#of CDs from factory 7

Indeed, the entire contents of the Service partition are dumped back into the IBM_SERVICE from those 6 discs at which point it will start decompressing the contents into the IBM_PRELOAD partition and a couple of hours later you have the OOBE again. So you can have 6 Discs (+1 bootable) of clean factory restore material that will start you from scratch, or 6 Discs (+1 bootable) of configured OS and application stuff. If it takes 6 Discs for just the Factory Recovery material then you can't expect to get that same material + a regular backup on the same number of discs. You must have had a fairly clean system for 6 RnR restore CDs, with the amount of crap people put on their systems the number of discs for a backup can get crazy.

The seven + 1 I burned from my R&R have the same information as the seven + 1 I got from the factory, there is no pre-configured anything, these CD's are not a "backup" of my system, they are a copy of the recovery partition.

I have a 10 gig HD that I use to test stuff and before I got the factory CD's I used to use my burned CDs to recover it, in order to do this I have to load all the CD's > let windows unload and before the reboot to start the windows installation i have to stop the process and use partition commander to delete the PDA/HPA and add that space back to the windows partition or else windows/ibm preload will not successfully install due to lack of space. After this process I am left with around 6 gigs for the IBM preload and no HPA. All the times i have done this I have had to pay close attention to the partitions sizes, they are the same with the factory cd's or the ones I created.

I think I see where the confusion is here. We are talking about (3) different things.

1. Product Recovery Discs purchased or acquired from IBM/Lenovo.
2. Product Recovery Discs burned from your ThinkPad using the Create Recovery Discs option (you can only do this once).
3. Backup made with Rescue and Recovery. This will restore the Windows partition when restoring from the Rescue and Recovery workspace - either from the hard drive or the Rescue Media CD.

Item 1. and Item 2. should be essentially the same thing. Possible variation due to version of drivers.

Item 3., if created when the ThinkPad was new, could be used to put the Factory install on the C: drive, but I guess it would not build a complete Service Partition as the Product Recovery Discs would (this is speculation on my part).

croooowe

It will just be much smaller if they are restore CDs vs Factory Recovery Discs.

AFAIK, the Windows Recovery option only reinstalls the OS image on the disk as it came from factory, this is different than the IBM HDD Preload which includes the hidden partition.

GomJabbar is correct. We are not on the same page as the Restore vs Recovery terms are a confusing, virtually identical, naming setup. "Restore Discs" by IBM/Lenovo terms are different from "Recovery Discs."

"Restore Discs" are discs created by Rescue and Recovery as a backup of your current system so you can restore your system to a previous state. Restoring these discs to a blank system (or restoring after booting from the first disc) will result in a mini IBM_SERVICE partition including only the files necessary for RnR to restore the system. This is because it does not include the "hidden" service partition as part of the current setup necessary to get the system back up and running after a failure.

However, whether a user gets Discs from IBM/Lenovo or burns them using the "Create Recovery Discs," 'Recovery' being the operative word, both sets are still restoring to a Factory fresh state so both are "Factory Recovery Discs." The terms are used interchangeably throughout the help files as I'm sure some people will be happy to tear them apart to point me wrong but looking at the titles of the discs in the programs that create them and those are the basic names used. The boot disc from the Recovery Discs will be identical to the boot disc from a Restore set until the user upgrades the RnR. Two different sets of Discs but both are using components from RnR.

So Wolf, did your disks come from IBM/Lenovo and how many are there?

I made my own IBM Rescue and Recovery Disks

There are 6 of them if you burn them on CDRs; You would need one CD and one DVD if you wanted to burn them that way.

AFAIK, the Windows Recovery option only reinstalls the OS image on the disk as it came from factory, this is different than the IBM HDD Preload which includes the hidden partition.

Wolf, not sure what you meant by this. Recovery discs or Restore discs will recreate the hidden service partition, it's just a matter of what goes into it. Recovery will be the pre Windows boot material + the Factory contents while the Restore will just put the pre Win boot there.

The IBM recovery disks will make the HPA; the *Windows* Recovery option in the Program Files menu will not do this to the best of my knowledge.

This is correct, on newer systems restores done from within Windows will not create a service partition as it should already be in place. If not, either there wasn't a typical one to begin with or the restore would fail anyway when, using files from the now missing service partition, it attempts to reboot to the PDA to perform the restore.

i only have 5. and they came from ibm directly.
is that weird?

xp-p sp2
fru pn 24r8128