Thinkpads Forum

Which version of Partition Magic is required to get rid of the recovery partition on the T61p. I see that some of the older versions are shareware and free while the latest is $50-$80.

Can this be done by other means. Keep in mind I do not know what I am doing! <vbg>

Just wanting to get rid of the un-needed partition on my SSD without destroying anything.

If there is a step by step thread somewhere, a pointer would be helpful!

After a friend told me about "Gparted Clonezilla Live CD", I never had any headaches on partitioning, backups, or cloning. Just google it, it works for both NTFS and linux partitions.

It is not hard for me to figure out how to use. Then again, I am a professional techie. If you have never deleted a partition before, ask one of your techie friends to walk you through it, so you won't accidentally delete the wrong one.

Greg Gebhardt wrote:Which version of Partition Magic is required to get rid of the recovery partition on the T61p. I see that some of the older versions are shareware and free while the latest is $50-$80.

Can this be done by other means. Keep in mind I do not know what I am doing! <vbg>

Just wanting to get rid of the un-needed partition on my SSD without destroying anything.

If there is a step by step thread somewhere, a pointer would be helpful!

There's an option in the BIOS settings to delete the partition.

In the BIOS settings you want Security->IBM PreDesktop Area and set it to disabled. After that you should be able to use any partition editing software to manipulate the previously-hidden partition (haven't used PM so I can't say for sure). Also, I assume you've already made your recovery disks and backed everything up?

Superego wrote:In the BIOS settings you want Security->IBM PreDesktop Area and set it to disabled. After that you should be able to use any partition editing software to manipulate the previously-hidden partition (haven't used PM so I can't say for sure). Also, I assume you've already made your recovery disks and backed everything up?

OK will disable the protection, tonight. There might, according to another poster, be a way to delete the partition from the bios! If so that would be nice. If not I will download Partition Magic.

Yes, all is backed up as I moved everything to the Samsung SSD drive and I always have the original drive to put back into the laptop if required.

Superego wrote:In the BIOS settings you want Security->IBM PreDesktop Area and set it to disabled. After that you should be able to use any partition editing software to manipulate the previously-hidden partition (haven't used PM so I can't say for sure). Also, I assume you've already made your recovery disks and backed everything up?

WPWoodJr wrote:There's an option in the BIOS settings to delete the partition.

No, there isn't. *61 machines don't have predesktop option coded in the BIOS.

ryengineer wrote:

Superego wrote:In the BIOS settings you want Security->IBM PreDesktop Area and set it to disabled. After that you should be able to use any partition editing software to manipulate the previously-hidden partition (haven't used PM so I can't say for sure). Also, I assume you've already made your recovery disks and backed everything up?

WPWoodJr wrote:There's an option in the BIOS settings to delete the partition.

No, there isn't. *61 machines don't have predesktop option coded in the BIOS.

YOU are correct AND Partition Magic deos not like Vista. I also can see not utility in the BIOS to dump the RR partition. Looks like I am stuck with it unless someone has another idea. If not I can live with it

If you use Apricorn's EZ GIG II, in the manual mode, you can clone the drive without the recovery partition.

Greg Gebhardt wrote:YOU are correct AND Partition Magic deos not like Vista. I also can see not utility in the BIOS to dump the RR partition. Looks like I am stuck with it unless someone has another idea. If not I can live with it

Following steps were mentioned in one of the lenovo guides I saw somewhere:

1. Uninstall Rescue and Recovery in Windows.
2. Remove the partition by using a third-party partitioning tool.
3. Reboot.
4. Reinstall Rescue and Recovery.

For 3rd party partitioning tool, you can use gparted directly to delete the hidden partition or burn a LiveCD of Knoppix and then use gparted from there.

I just went through this joy this morning. It was a TOUGH process. Here is a summary of what I needed to do...

- Initially tried to use BIOS to disable the predesktop area. But on my 8889 T61, I found as you mention, the option is no longer there! On to plan B....
- I used a bootable USB key to boot into DOS. On the key I have the old MS-DOS FDISK tool.
- Run "FDISK /MBR" (this rebuilds the master boot record)
- Next, launch FDISK, and delete the "Non-DOS parition", this recovers the ~5GB of space
- After completing this, Vista was no longer bootable. I used a Vista32 installation DVD to boot, and then used the menu options to "rebuild the boot area". The whole process took about 1 minute.
- Note: I used a Vista32 installation disk, but I truly am using the Thinkpad out-of-the-box preload. I'm just lucky to also have the Vista disk... without it, I'd be dead in the water with an unbootable system.
- Reboot into Vista, but found the free space was all at the start of the drive, and I was unable to use the built-in disk management tool to "expand" and reclaim that 5GB of free space. So....
- Google search and found the Gparted live-boot CD. I needed to boot with the "Force VESA" option in order to get video to work
- Gparted is slick. I was able to move / resize the parition, and recover all the space. Took about 1 hour to complete, but I also have a lot of data that needed to be shuffled around.
- Vista again unbootable. So once again boot from Vista installation DVD, and recover the boot partition.
- Done! Vista boots, all the HDD space is mine!

I may have gone the long way around. Gparted may be able to do-it-all... but in any case, I got it to work.

Not sure if there is a better way or not, but in any case, nice work!

In general, I have found it pretty essential to keep on hand the appropriate Vista installation disk, 32 or 64, for one's Vista installation. I downloaded an x64 one (from a torrent site) with SP1 slipstreamed. It has already come in handy and I won't be leaving home without it in my laptop bag. One of these days, if I need the extra space, I may get rid of the recovery partition by using it to do a clean install.

Riddil wrote:I just went through this joy this morning. It was a TOUGH process. Here is a summary of what I needed to do...

- Initially tried to use BIOS to disable the predesktop area. But on my 8889 T61, I found as you mention, the option is no longer there! On to plan B....
- I used a bootable USB key to boot into DOS. On the key I have the old MS-DOS FDISK tool.
- Run "FDISK /MBR" (this rebuilds the master boot record)
- Next, launch FDISK, and delete the "Non-DOS parition", this recovers the ~5GB of space

...

I may have gone the long way around. Gparted may be able to do-it-all... but in any case, I got it to work.

I think your problem may have been running FDISK/MBR - why did you do that? You replaced the Vista MBR with a DOS/Windows version.