Still another question about backing up service partition

[richk]

I just got a used T41 and recovered from the service partition. I then applied all the driver and windows security updates (an endless process) and now I want to use Acronis True Image Home 10 to do a backup of both partitions to an image file. The service partition used to be a hidden partition that Acronis could see and somewhere in the process, some upgrade I did (probably some recovery "improvement") has made the partition disappear. In the BIOS, under security/predesktop, I can choose normal, secure or disabled. With normal or secure, the disk looks like there is a single partition. Acronis cannot see the service partion to back it up. If I choose disabled, I get all kinds of warnings, but Acronis sees the space as unpartitioned and cannot back it up. I am thinking about setting the option to disabled and then running fixmbr, but I am afraid of a disaster.

Any suggestions?

[pksw]

If your system is the same as mine (I have a T41p), then you cannot back up the service partition using Acronis. It is a special FAT-12 partition.

Do NOT try to run FIXMBR in "disabled" mode. You could kill the recovery partition.

There are a few ways to back up the service partition. Create a FAT32 partition about 6 gig in size. You can use a partition resizing utility.

Then boot off a CDROM, and use FWBACKUP.EXE to backup the partition to the FAT32 partition. If you need FWBACKUP and FWRESTORE I can send them to you.

Another method, if you don't mind running the "restore to factory" option, is to allow that to run. You can interrupt the process after all the files have been extracted to the hard disk (prior to the first WinXP boot). Then boot off a bootable CDROM, and copy all those setup files from the newly created FAT32 partition to another drive/partition.

If you have to ask questions about what to do, then I would NOT advice disabling the security to the service partition. Leave it in normal (or secure mode). Otherwise you could kill the service partition. I learnt the hard way, and had to get IBM to restore my hard disk.

[richk]

Actually, I finally could get the disk backed up using Acronis. First, I made a new factory image disk to play with and kept my original one safe. I used my restore CDs to make a new working disk with XP and the HPA. There are more steps and I can send you the whole list, but this is the short version. I disabled the partition and removed the disk from the machine. I put the disk into another computer running XP and used disk manager to create a fat32 partition in the newly visable space without formatting. I used Acronis to back up the whole disk. He gave me lots of warnings about my 2nd partition being screwed up and he needed to do a sector-by-sector backup. I could restore that image (whole disk) to another drive. I used disk manager to delete the fat32 partition on the new drive. I could then put that disk into my T41, and reset the partition to normal and have it work. After that success, I tried to run the restore to a larger disk (upgrade from 40 to 80), but that disk was totally screwed up. I am planning to spend a little time seeing if I can figure out how to fix up the partition table, but I'm not hopeful.