Recovery Disks = HPA ?

[dmichael]

I just bought a new Thinkpad T42 2379-RHU. I just finished making a set of recovery disks. Please forgive me if the answer to this question already has been discussed. I've done a fair amount of forum searching to date with no luck answering this specific question.

What is actually on the Recovery Disks???

1) A set of program instuctions that needs to have the HPA present on the HDD so it can copy (from HPA) XP and other apps and settings in order to return the machine back to its original factory state.

2) An actual copy of the HPA plus some scripts to format and copy.

If the answer is 2, then is it safe to say you can take a brand new + empty HDD, install it in the primary drive bay and boot from the Recovery disk set to return to the original factory state on the new drive?
TIA
Mike

[Kyocera]

The recovery discs will return your computer back to the first day when you pulled it out of the box and turned it on. You can also press f11 when booting the computer (not restarting, cold boot after leaving it off for 10 seconds) to recover to factory state. Yes you can take an empty HD and reinstall everything with the recovery CD's, guard them well.

Mike

[bill bolton]

2) An actual copy of the HPA plus some scripts to format and copy.

If the answer is 2, then is it safe to say you can take a brand new + empty HDD, install it in the primary drive bay and boot from the Recovery disk set to return to the original factory state on the new drive?

Basically, the answer is not exactly your option #2, but the outcome of what it does is as you have described.

Cheers,

Bill

[dmichael]

Yes you can take an empty HD and reinstall everything with the recovery CD's, guard them well.

Excellent - that's the answer I was hoping to hear. So there is no need to copy the HPA onto the new drive since it is all there on the Recovery disks. I've seen a number of threads where people are efforting to copy the HPA onto their new upgraded drive. At this moment, that does not make sense to me. Especially, if you have made your R&R disks, why copy the HPA to take up space on the new drive when its all there on the Disks, or am I missing something?

Thank you Kyocera and Bill!

[Kyocera]

A lot of those threads are referencing the t41 and cloning with ghost or acronis. Using the factory cds is very easy. You can get rid of the hpa and use the space.

[dmichael]

Just to clarify,

with the T42, use the R&R disks on a new drive, which does not copy the HPA onto the new drive, so you reclaim that space.

With T41, you must clone the old to new to be able to restore to original factory state?

[Kyocera]

with the T42, use the R&R disks on a new drive, which does not copy the HPA onto the new drive, so you reclaim that space

If you want to reclaim the space disable predesktop security in bios.

With T41, you must clone the old to new to be able to restore to original factory state?

No i was assuming you may have been reading through some older threads where they were discussing the difficulties in recreating the hpa via cloning, the t41 was the example that came to mind. this is using a HD enclosure to copy one drive to another, not using cds.