Thinkpads Forum

Hi everyone,

This is probably a topic that has been well discussed, but I haven't found a current thread yet that answers my specific question as applied to T60. Appreciate any links or direct replies here.

A new T60 is arriving from IBM today, to be my wife's laptop. Before it is even booted into XP the first time, I'd like to image the complete HD (service partition and everything) onto an external USB HD, so I can nuke it back to the exact initial configuration at will in the future.

I use Acronis True Image 9 these days, and routinely back up our computers via a bootable memory key with Acronis TI9 on it. So there's no problem hitting F12 or whatever during POST, have it boot from the key, and create a compressed image over on the USB drive.

My concern is that whole recovery partition and the possible "protection" in the BIOS that might hide it. That's why I'm posting here; I'd like the latest story on this. Do I need to do anything in the BIOS before running the imaging software? The last time I dealt with this was with my T42P, at which time they had I think just started with BIOS protection for part of the hard drive or something, and there was much confusion. I had them send recovery CDs so I just wiped the recovery partition and have had a happy life since. But I want to be more "by the numbers" on this T60 for the wife.

Any T60-specific up-to-date info would be greatly appreciated so I can back the thing up and turn it over to my wife.

Thanks in advance,

Marc

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27721

Check this thread, you'll have to boot to install the cloning software. You can also make a set of recovery CD's from the machine, but again you'll have to boot it. The recovery CD's will have the same image as your machine, before you ever booted it.

Hi Kyocera,

Thanks for the reply. However, I'm not sure that thread speaks quite to my issue.

I won't be installing any cloning software on the new computer, so there's no need to boot the new computer into XP prior to creating my first image backup. The backup software I'm using (Acronis TI9) is already self-contained on my memory key in bootable form.

And to be clear, my desire isn't to clone it, but rather to create a compressed backup image of its original pre-first-boot state, with that backup being on an external USB 3.5" drive. This archival image may be used in the future to restore the computer to the exactly original configuration.

I just hate the idea of having to create a bunch of CDs using the utility that creates them...

My question is really summarized as follows: to successfully image the (pristine) hard drive of a brand new T60, service partition and all, do I need to make any BIOS changes to unhide any parts of the drive that would otherwise be unavailable to the imaging software?

Thanks all!

Marc

Marc_G wrote:My question is really summarized as follows: to successfully image the (pristine) hard drive of a brand new T60, service partition and all, do I need to make any BIOS changes to unhide any parts of the drive that would otherwise be unavailable to the imaging software?

Answer to you question is: No.
DriveImage (PowerQuest/Symantec), Ghost (Symantec), and TrueImage (Acronis) can "see" everything on a physical drive. You probably should use one of these packages.