Difference between HPA and Pre-Desktop Area?

[leesiulung]

Is there a difference between HPA and Pre-Desktop Area?

Are any of those tings related to how Rescue and Recovery work?

I'm confused. The more I read the more I get confused...

[christopher_wolf]

Kinda, there was a change between the HPA and an actual partition which it used (BEER for Boot Engineering Extension Record) and a specialized Type 12 area (PARTIES for Protected Area Run Time Interface Extension Services). In the latter case, the BIOS retains and secures the last few GBs on the very edge of the HDD for this very purpose and it can boot into its own little self-contained OS for R&R purposes. The T40 and T41 have the former type of partition where it is simply a specially hidden partition on the HDD itself; this changed with the T42 and T43 and probably with the X40 going from the previous X Series as they made the change in one go near the same timeframe.

[leesiulung]

I'm sorry, christopher_wolf, I'm still confused.

I have an X31. So I'm not sure which on applies to me or for that matter know what the differences are.

So there is/has a BEER for the older HPA and the newer HPA is/has a PARTIES?

[christopher_wolf]

Yeah, that is pretty much it. The real difference is that PARTIES is more specialized than BEER and has a component that interfaces with the Phoenix BIOS through the PhoenixFirstWare API. So it is more elaborate. BEER can be setup and used for just about any "hidden" partition and there has been some talk of being able to get it to restore an OS preload image other than what came with the Thinkpad. Your X31, if I remember correctly, should have the BEER HPA.

[leesiulung]

So both types of HPA has a BEER, but how can I get PARTIES?

I see that the HPA has a BEER and I recognize that window in your link on my computer. Once I install RnR 3.x I get a different screen. Is that the newer HPA?

The title of the page (you linked) says "What is PARTIES?", but it shows BEER in the diagram... doesn't even discuss PARTIES. I guess maybe that is what is tripping me up.

[christopher_wolf]

PARTIES is the overarching set of all those features. It is a specialized routine that the BIOS activates. BEER, itself, was used before as a simple "hidden" partition and a mini OS image was placed on it to recover the Thinkpad. R&R should work with whatever version of it you have. R&R contains a few updates to the way it writes backups, stores information, and access the HPA.

Here is some more information on both of them.

HTH

[leesiulung]

So how can I get PARTIES on my X31?

I'm assuming my recovery cd's will only put BEER on my X31.

[christopher_wolf]

It would be very difficult and probably nigh unto impossible. I haven't heard of anybody changing the R&R type and getting it to work. Yet why do it in the first place? You already have a recovery system operation on your X31 and, if it does the job, why would you want to put a different type on it?

[leesiulung]

This is slightly off topic but perhaps you can help me. To get the pre-desktop area onto my brand new hard drive I can do one of the following:

1. use the recovery cd's

2. clone the original hard drive that came with my thinkpad (if the pre-desktop area is still intact) using ghost or similar software

3. do some fancy stuff with some utilities fwbackup or something like that...

To clarify, HPA is the same as the pre-desktop area, which is where you can boot into (other than windows assuming I don't use any other OS)... Is that correct?

btw, I noticed you are from UC Berkeley. I'm a Cal Alumni 2005, EECS... GO BEARS!!!

[christopher_wolf]

1. use the recovery cd's

Correct, that should give you the option to re-image the entire drive or just the C: partition.

2. clone the original hard drive that came with my thinkpad (if the pre-desktop area is still intact) using ghost or similar software

Yeees, although there is a slight trick involving depending on what you use to clone it. This is covered in the HDD drive cloning FAQ and in quite a few threads.

To clarify, HPA is the same as the pre-desktop area, which is where you can boot into (other than windows assuming I don't use any other OS)... Is that correct?

Correcto mundo, amigo. Both forms of it do almost exactly the same thing, be it the HPA/BEER or the PARTIES/Type 12 partition. They just have slightly different ways of doing it.

btw, I noticed you are from UC Berkeley. I'm a Cal Alumni 2005, EECS... GO BEARS!!!

Go Bears! BioE/Med Senoir student and research on track for an MD/PhD program (UCB/UCSF).

[christopher_wolf]

1. use the recovery cd's

Correct, that should give you the option to re-image the entire drive or just the C: partition.

2. clone the original hard drive that came with my thinkpad (if the pre-desktop area is still intact) using ghost or similar software

Yeees, although there is a slight trick involving depending on what you use to clone it. This is covered in the HDD drive cloning FAQ and in quite a few threads.

3. do some fancy stuff with some utilities fwbackup or something like that...

Yup; you could also use XXCOPY to do it as I do believe it should handle it as well.

To clarify, HPA is the same as the pre-desktop area, which is where you can boot into (other than windows assuming I don't use any other OS)... Is that correct?

Correcto mundo, amigo. Both forms of it do almost exactly the same thing, be it the HPA/BEER or the PARTIES/Type 12 partition. They just have slightly different ways of doing it.

btw, I noticed you are from UC Berkeley. I'm a Cal Alumni 2005, EECS... GO BEARS!!!

Go Bears! BioE/Med Senoir student and research on track for an MD/PhD program (UCB/UCSF).

[leesiulung]

Correct, that should give you the option to re-image the entire drive or just the C: partition.

I only remember seeing the option to just re-image the whole drive (I'm assuming with the HPA). The second option I had was to check the machine for errors with various utilities. I would like the HPA, but also do a clean install. Doing a full re-image (both c: and hpa) and then deleting c: partition and do a clean install. Will this cause any problems? Any other solution to just get the HPA partition on w/o the c:\ also...?

I really appreciate you being patient and helping me with this. Hopefully somebody else will find this thread usefull too.

Go Bears! BioE/Med Senoir student and research on track for an MD/PhD program (UCB/UCSF).

Awesome, that is really impressive. I think I will go back for a PhD too, but wanted to take short break in between... applying this fall.

[christopher_wolf]

Good luck on the application.

Ah, that might be one of the things that is different with the X31. Certain Thinkpads and R&R disk versions have the ability to format the whole HDD or only C:.