How do I ged rid of the hidden backup partition on a t61p?

[pheos]

Hey does anyone know how to get rid of that hidden partition did see that option in the Bios. I want to repartition and make a clean install...

[ryengineer]

In the BIOS under Security options for Predesktop area, simply set it to "Disabled" the OS will then reclaim that area.

Please do yourself a favor and create Product recovery disks beforehand.

[pheos]

Well sorry bud there is no such thing as a "predesktop area option"...
I know there was on on my old t41p but here there is none!!

[ryengineer]

I don't own T61, my T60 does show a Predesktop option under security in the Bios but I can check things out for you. Nevertheless, another way to delete the hidden service partition is during the installation of most OS today, regardless of Linux or Windows. You can simply format and merge the recovery partition to the other partitions of your HDD and continue with the clean install.

[pheos]

I will try that today! But there is really not predesktop option in the Bios... so an update on that would be really nice!!

[hypertrophy]

Which OS are you using? If it's vista, type in Diskpart into the search and run the application. Then enter the command lines listed on the following site, and you should be able to delete the hidden partition.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

If you're not going ahead with a clean install, you'll need a 3rd party software to shrink and combine the 6gb partition with the primary partition. With a clean install you can skip the last step. Good luck.

[pheos]

Well I ended up installing a new Win XP, since I prefer the German version and I had and educational one flying around I used that one.
During the installation I was able to remove the partition!

I first had to recompile the Windows CD with the Intel SATA drivers first though....otherwise the install would not see the hard drive (and since it doesn't have a floppy...).

Now my system is all nice and perfect and I only got the stuff on there that I want!

[rssb]

The service partition was set to type 12 in the earlier systems and used to reside at the end of the drive. While creating recovery disks, it used to be mounted as FAT32 but not in T61 with vista.


From what a freind told me, in t61's it resides in the front of the drive. May be they changed the partition type or something else is changed the way it is accessed. Also the imaging utilities are M$ ones as opposed to powerquest ( PQDI's or PQNT's ) earlier.

[runixd]

the partition is indeed in the front and partitioned as ntfs. mkfs solves the problem.