Thinkpads Forum

I have just successfully replace the main hard disk in my T60 with a bigger one.

However, I was unable to copy the partition that Rescue and Recovery uses. I guess it must be shielded somehow.

So my question is whether I would be better off reinstalling Rescue and Recovery from scratch rather than fiddling with the partition. I seem to remember that there were some problems sometimes with R&R that could cause the machine to become unbootable, but also that the latest version fixes that.

Is there someone who can tell me what's the most sensible way to get the latest stable version of R&R on my machine? Assuming that it's worth having at all, that is.

I've reserved a partition on my new disk that's slightly bigger than the R&R partition was on the old disk.

Personally if I were having trouble transferring it I’d forget it and if needed save & use the original drive to make a copy again. This way you’ll have all the apps, updates etc since you first got the T60, not the skinny as delivered system. I happen to use on a weekly basis True Image and put the image of C on another outside drive. I also make my C only 20G and keep MPs and Photos on the other partitions or another drive also for BU which makes images small and faster.

visch1 wrote:Personally if I were having trouble transferring it I’d forget it and if needed save & use the original drive to make a copy again.

I am sorry but I do not know what you mean by "use the original drive to make a copy again."

My problem is that R&R creates a "service partition" which I am unable to copy from the old drive for reasons that I do not understand. Windows disk manager shows that partition as existing, but does not let me change or even examine its properties.

You now have a working good drive in your notebook, that's the original. Copy it's info to the new drive and use the original drive as your backup drive, you won't need to mess with R&R, It will be, or should be more up to date than a R&R recovery. If you have a problem with the new drive in the future you can be up and running in a few minutes by switching drives. I'm a nut for backing up and personaly like images especially since I keep "C" less than 20G and use seperate partitions for storage and seperate drives for my backup images.

Ark, I'd suspect that if you are trying to clone a disc with the Windows Disc Mangler, it isn't going to work on any non-Microsoft partitions. Like the R&R partition.

If you still have the original disc unchanged, use real disc cloning software like Acronis (or the free versions that ship/download with/for WD or Seagate drives, if your new drive is one of those) and the whole thing gets copied over, including the R&R partition. The only fidgety part is partition sizes, if you want to size them manually that sometimes takes a bit more poking around.

hellosailor wrote:If you still have the original disc unchanged, use real disc cloning software like Acronis.

Alas, I tried Acronis, and it hangs. I sent a note to their technical support people and got back an advertising blurb, complete with pictures.

Yeah, I'm not in love with them either, but MS will be the first to tell you their tools are sometimes only designed for their own products. Look elsewhere to clone a non-MS drive.

In the days when I started using TI the answers I got from this forum were far better than their support people.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdis ... rune=&f=65

hellosailor wrote:Yeah, I'm not in love with them either, but MS will be the first to tell you their tools are sometimes only designed for their own products. Look elsewhere to clone a non-MS drive.

Indeed. But Acronis won't do it, so I need to look elsewhere. Where?

And why isn't there a straightforward way to ask R&R to recreate the partition for me? Especially as the partition is based on R&R version 3 and version 4 is out now.

FWIW,

I have successfully used drive clone 5.1 to copy HD's.

They have a 30-day full function trial.

Check it:

http://www.farstone.com/software/driveclone.htm

Hi gang:

I've come to really depend on Symantec's Ghost for my backup needs. I have used the new 2009 version, but find the older 2003 version to work just fine. The 2009 Version of Ghost works in the Windows enviorment. As far as the older version of Ghost, I've crated a USB drive with the needed files and use this as a boot devise when either creating a backup set or restoring my drive.

I've used Partition Magic to create a partition and keep several backup on this area of my drive. I also keep a few backup sets on DVD just in case my hard drive ever fails.

Additionally, I have a recovery set which I made when I first got my T60.

It's all so simple and works great.

Hope this gives some ideas to those in need.

Best to all, Steve

I have a feeling that the operation of transferring an OS from drive to drive is too complicated for many to do because of the poor instruction language and some can't read. I came from the older Mac OS where all that was required was to drag the original OS into a new drive. It had to be Blessed but that was it. Came over to XP and my learning curve was steep. Even today I must read the instructions carefully for each step, backup and recovery. The old warcry was RTFM, I’ll add several times. This from someone that feels “READING THE DIRECTIONS IS ADMITTING DEFEAT”

visch1 wrote:I have a feeling that the operation of transferring an OS from drive to drive is too complicated for many to do because of the poor instruction language and some can't read.

I really hate to be a nuisance about this, but I am not asking about transferring the OS. I've already done that. It's easy.

What I cannot figure out how to do is to transfer the hidden EISA partition that Lenovo put on my original drive. The trouble is that in order to copy from it, I have to assign it a drive letter, and I can't assign it a drive letter because it's hidden. And the one raw-drive transfer program I've tried so far won't touch hidden partitions either.

"What I cannot figure out how to do is to transfer the hidden EISA partition that Lenovo put on my original drive. "
That's because first, EISA is an i/o bus, an extension of the "ISA" i/o bus that predated the PCI bus that...has nothing to do with drive formats and partitions.

The "rules" for partitioning, formatting, and activating (flagging as active) drive partitions vary a bit from OS to OS, but they've pretty much been the same since DOS days for MS OSes. You don't ever "transfer a partition". You format the new drive, partition the new drive, and then COPY THE INFORMATION from one partition to another. On a different drive or the same drive.

Generally speaking you never want to mess with partition information on a "live" drive, because sometimes bad things happen and you wipe the entire drive. Yes, many products like Partition Manager tell you that you can repartition and change sizes and insert new partitions on the fly--but they also tell you to back up first, because they can and do crash and wipe out entire drives in the process. Been there, done that. Especially when they take shortcuts that the OS does not support.

So if you want to replace a drive, and keep the hidden partition on the new drive? The process is to create matching size partitions before you copy any data to them. Or, to use some slick software that will shift the partitions on the new drive--but backup everything else first.

hellosailor wrote: The "rules" for partitioning, formatting, and activating (flagging as active) drive partitions vary a bit from OS to OS, but they've pretty much been the same since DOS days for MS OSes. You don't ever "transfer a partition". You format the new drive, partition the new drive, and then COPY THE INFORMATION from one partition to another. On a different drive or the same drive.

Yes, I understand that.

hellosailor wrote: So if you want to replace a drive, and keep the hidden partition on the new drive? The process is to create matching size partitions before you copy any data to them. Or, to use some slick software that will shift the partitions on the new drive--but backup everything else first.

Yes, I understand that too. And that is what I did. (Actually, I created a partition on the new drive that is slightly larger than the corresponding partition on the old drive).

And I had no trouble copying the data in the OS partition from the old drive to the new one.

But I cannot copy the data from the EISA partition in the old drive to the new drive because the copy program (DriveImage XML) will only copy from a partition that has a drive letter assigned, and I cannot assign a drive letter to an EISA partition.

Ark-
Even tough Drive Mangler shows it as an "EISA partition" that's the wrong term for it. The same friendly folks who write cryptic BSOD error messages probably coded this software. The drive controller is probbaly appearing as generic EISA hardware, which applies to ALL the partitions. The problem is that Windows has not been given the ability to recognize *NIX (Unix, Linux, etc) drive formats and MS does not support them. So the OS is designed not to touch them.

If you COULD assign drive letters, change flags, etc. on a *NIX partition that could be incredibly dangerous unless MS supported those partition types and kept current with them. Which they have no incentive to do.

You need to use third party software for this. Drive partition/management software that works in *NIX as well as being certified Vista-compliant (or XP compliant, as the case may be). You might be able to do this by booting into Ubuntu, a free distribution of *nix, from a CD.

But MS products will never let you do this, for your own safety and for their own liability. Ain't gonna happen. And since Windows never is going to touch that partition--assigning a drive letter to it would only be a tease. Worse, it would leave one less letter available in Windows.

I admire the want to have a BU but can’t understand the want to backup from something that’s from the way past time wise. I make an image of the drive and all that’s in C for up to date copies of the drive. I said before : why not just keep the “old” drive for BU purposes? C in it will be fresher than the R&R in it & easy to install again if needed though still not up to date.

visch1 wrote:I admire the want to have a BU but can’t understand the want to backup from something that’s from the way past time wise. I make an image of the drive and all that’s in C for up to date copies of the drive. I said before : why not just keep the “old” drive for BU purposes? C in it will be fresher than the R&R in it & easy to install again if needed though still not up to date.

Of course I intend to keep the old drive.

Actually, in principle I shouldn't even need it, because I should be able to make an image of the new drive on a USB disk from time to time, and then if there is a crash, use a USB->ATA adapter to reinstall on that or another disk.