T23 - Problem upgrading Hard Drive

[LtTPfan]

And to think those folks at the shop are recognized by the local courts as "computer forensic experts". Kind of a scary thought.

Ain't that the truth! Congratulations; I'm glad it worked out for you.

[dsvochak]

I'm also pleased you got it working.

how hard is it to blow off the IBM recovery partition. I'm running XP so have no use for a Win2K recovery. I'd really prefer to regain that 10g of space and put it to better use.

The easiest solution is to use partition magic or one of the other disk partitioning tools available (some of which are free) to delete the service partition and expand the XP partition.

See these threads for discussions of the process:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15657
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=12923
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=11449

[dsvochak]

I have cloned close a good half dozen XP HDs with the the target drive in the pc with Acronis, and have never run into the problem described. In each case the drive has fired right up when the original drive is replaced with it.

It appears there are three ways to screw up moving to a larger hard drive (at least with True Image 8 and a T2x machine).

The first is relatively simple: clone the hard drive using "Clone Disk" and reboot with both the original drive and the new drive in or attached to the machine. This creates the problem described at goodells.net regarding drive letters etc.

The second arises using "Create Image" to clone. If you don't have an adapter to hook up the new 2.5" drive, you can "clone" by creating a disk image and restoring it to the new drive. If the "created image" doesn't contain all the partitions on the original disk, "Restore Image" will restore the image to a new disk, but it may not boot. According to the True Image support forum, creating an image with less than all the partitions on the original disk creates a situation where the MBR may not be contained in the image and is therefore not transferred to the new disk.

The third, again from the True Image support forum, may have been what happened at the shops KelloggKid used. Apparently, if you remove the TP disk from the machine, connect it to a desktop and clone to a new disk for the TP, the cloning process may fail because the desktop reads the notebook drive geometry differently than the TP does.

In any case, my experience has been the same as Nolonemo's when following the procedure described in his quote above.

[Nolonemo]

dsvochak, nice concise post. This information should be in a sticky somewhere.

[MadMikeSS]

I read through this thread, and notice the problem moving up to a larger HD and trying to clone over the data from the old HD.

How about if I was to just put in a 100GB HD and start fresh? I should be ok to just boot and install WinXP? I just got my T23, has a 20GB HD and I really would like to upgrade the HD to something bigger. I'm going to be checking into the bios update to see if mine is current. I don't foresee running into any problems installing but it sounds like people have played tricks on their machines to get them to work. I just wanna make sure before I do anything.

Edit: Went into the BIOS and I have version 1.08a 1/17/2002. Sounds like I should be ok for larger HD.

[KelloggKid]

Dsvochak, you hit the nail on the head. Turns out the shop took the old drive out of the T23 and put it into another machine along with the new drive, all on IDE with adapter cables. Cloned over with Acronis but I suspect you are right on about the other machine not reading the geometry properly. Sure do appreciate all the help. Love the extra capacity.

Dale

[dsvochak]

MadMikeSS wrote:

How about if I was to just put in a 100GB HD and start fresh? I should be ok to just boot and install WinXP? I just got my T23, has a 20GB HD and I really would like to upgrade the HD to something bigger.

Cloning is relatively simple and painless as long as you don't make the mistakes in my last post. The big advantage is you don't have to reinstall everything.

A fresh install is fine, as long as you have the various drivers and utilities available. See this http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-44842 for IBM's instructions on installing XP on a T23.

[dsvochak]

dsvochak, nice concise post. This information should be in a sticky somewhere

Thanks for the compliment. It appears that the newer machines with the HPA have additional difficulties cloning so a sticky would need additional information. A sticky might be nice if someone could collect all the info.