Recovery Partition is there but its not???

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KillerStudio · #1 Post by **KillerStudio** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:28 pm

I recently upgraded a t41 to a t42 and it had a Hitachi 160gb 5400 hdd in it. The hdd originally had the t41 recovery partition (5 cds) loaded....but now I am trying to load the newer t42 recovery partition (7 recovery cds)...but I cannot remove the old recovery partition. My predesktop area is set to normal in bios. When I try to run the new recovery cds it would tell me to reboot to run the recovery process but then it will just try to load the old recovery data. I tried deleting the whole partition with my other thinkpad then when I try the new cds again...it makes me reboot and it runs the old recovery again. Even when the harddrive is set with no partitions....I still can get into the recovery menu by pressing the blue button. How do I remove this old recovery partition? Someone please help. BTW: the hdd is showing up as 1 145gb partition in Disk manager and in partition magic.

Thanks in advance!

andyP · #2 Post by **andyP** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:48 pm

You need to set the pre desktop area in bios to disabled, then it can be overwritten. If I remember rightly, it will set it back to normal itself after the recovery process.

#3 Post by **richk** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:37 pm

I set it to disabled, then wipe the disk, then set it to normal, then recover.

KillerStudio · #4 Post by **KillerStudio** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:33 pm

What did you use to wipe it?

#5 Post by **richk** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:03 pm

If it is Hitachi drive, I use Drive Fitness Test, otherwise I use one of the wiping tools on Ultimate Boot CD.

sjthinkpader · #6 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:59 pm

Assuming the two recovery partitions both contains WindowsXP, the old recovery partition from your T41 should work in the T42. In most cases it will only be missing a few drivers that you can add after recovery. The two extra CD growth is probably related to ThinkVantage utilities.

Other than a few Thinkpads away at college or something, in most cases recovery partition will never be used. I keep a drive image complete with application on a 40GB HDD.

#7 Post by **richk** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:12 pm

I disagree with the last post. The 7-CD set for the T42 includes, among other things, an entirely different way of storing the recovery info that the T40 or T41 set.

sjthinkpader · #8 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:31 pm

Ah, understood, similar to T43?

In that case it will be different. For my T43, I had to do a completely new installation for it to work also.

#9 Post by **richk** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:18 pm

Similar look and feel to T43 (2xxx models), but differences related to different disk controller, wireless options and PC card slot. The 1xxx models use Intel video and are different in that way also. The recovery partition is the same technology (T42 vs. T43). T 43 is more like the older models with a recovery partition. T41 and T40 use HPA which is a real pain to deal with.

KillerStudio · #10 Post by **KillerStudio** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:55 pm

Forgot to replay back....but I just wanted to say Thanks for the help guys!....Drive Fitness Test worked like a charm. Took a long time to wipe the drive clean but it gave me my hdd back!

Recovery Partition is there but its not???

Recovery Partition is there but its not???

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