Thinkpads Forum

I purchased my X61 with a 120 GB hard drive. It came with Vista Basic which I didn't like, and I installed XP over it. The way I did was simply by changing the SATA settings in BIOS to "Compatability" and booting from the XP installation CD. I then installed the missing drivers and everything works fine now. During the installation process, however, it asked which drive I would like to install the XP on. For some reason it showed me a partition with about 10 MB and another partion with about 110 MB. The one I chose was the larger one. Now, after the installation, the properties for Disk C show that the HDD capacity is only 107 GB. My computer doesn't show any other partition. So my question is what happened to the other 13 GB since it was a 120 GB HDD and how can I recover the missing space?

One other question is should I change the BIOS settings back to AHCI and will I need any drivers for that?

alosito wrote:I purchased my X61 with a 120 GB hard drive. It came with Vista Basic which I didn't like, and I installed XP over it. The way I did was simply by changing the SATA settings in BIOS to "Compatability" and booting from the XP installation CD. I then installed the missing drivers and everything works fine now. During the installation process, however, it asked which drive I would like to install the XP on. For some reason it showed me a partition with about 10 MB and another partion with about 110 MB. The one I chose was the larger one. Now, after the installation, the properties for Disk C show that the HDD capacity is only 107 GB. My computer doesn't show any other partition. So my question is what happened to the other 13 GB since it was a 120 GB HDD and how can I recover the missing space?

One other question is should I change the BIOS settings back to AHCI and will I need any drivers for that?

You wont have 120 gigs total, since HDD manufacturers consider 1 GB=1000 megabytes when 1 GB=1024 megabytes, so you should have approximately 117 gigs of space (120x1000/1024=117.1875)

Your Thinkpad should have a hidden restore partition with Vista one it (by installing over Vista you wouldn't have affected the restore partition). This might account for your missing space.

If you want to know for sure you could a partition editor like Gparted and burn a live CD that you can stick in your machine before you reboot that should show you all of your partitions:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=173828

Thank you very much for your reply. If I use GParted Live CD, will I be able to delete everything from that smaller Vista partition and combine it with the larger one without losing any data on that larger one?

alosito wrote:Thank you very much for your reply. If I use GParted Live CD, will I be able to delete everything from that smaller Vista partition and combine it with the larger one without losing any data on that larger one?

If your sure you want to delete that Vista partition you can do that using GParted just fine (just right click it and tell it to delete then hit apply), then right click on your XP partition and select resize (then apply) to use the rest of the space.

Did you burn recovery discs before you wiped Vista? If you diddnt you may want to consider backup up your restore partition in case you ever had a need to bring back Vista.

I used Gparted LiveCD as you suggested, and I deleted the smaller partition. After I did that, now Gparted shows the following partitions for me:

Unallocated 4.67 Gb
NTFS 107.12 Gb

How to I merge that unallocated space with the main partition? And can I merge it all or do I need to leave unallocated space anyway?

Please also advise if I should change the BIOS settings back to AHCI and if I will need any drivers for that?

[censored]. After the operation with Gparted, my laptop doesn't start anymore. I get a black screen with an error saying there is a hard drive configuration problem. Again, here is what I did:

1. Booted from Gparted Live CD.

2. Gaprted shows three partitions:
uallocated: 1 Gb
/dev/hda1: 4.71 Gb
/dev/hda2: 107 Gb

3. I highleted the second partition (/dev/hda1: 4.71 Gb) and clicked on Delete.

4. After that operation, Gparted now shows these two partitions:

Unallocated 4.67 Gb
NTFS 107.12 Gb

That is it. Now when I try to turn on my laptop, I get a black screen saying there a harddrive configuration problem. What did I do wrong and what can I do to bring the laptop back to live?

Boot from the restore partition... no, wait you deleted that.

Boot from the recovery CDs you made before you deleted the restore partition...

If you didn't do that, boot from the XP CD and reinstall XP.

Ed Gibbs

When I try to reinstall XP now, I just get a black black screen. No error message or any other information -- like the computer is stuck.

When I go to BIOS and click on HDD diagnostic, I get a table in which Test is progress always statys zero, Result is always "Pass: Controller Diag", and nothing changes there either.

Did Gparted kill my hard drive?

Is there anything can be done to reformart my hard drive from a scratch?

If you can boot from a CD...

The HDD is probably not dead, just very confused. If you know what you are doing you could probably use a partition editing tool like Gparted to correct the problem, or you could do a full erase of the drive and then start from scratch. There are several ways to go.

Buy partition magic or BootitNG, install them on another machine and make emergency rescue disks, then use the rescue disks on the broke machine to edit or completely delete the partitions.

Get a Linux Live CD that lets you boot into Linux from a CD, then use Gparted to do the same.

Download the Thinkpad PC Doctor diagnostics from Lenovo and burn them to CD. There is a utility in PC Doctor that will let you do a "Full Erase" of the HDD which will wipe out any existing partitions and should allow you to reinstall Windows.

Call Lenovo and beg for a set of recovery disks. They may charge you $40. You may still need to do the full erase to get them to work.

The last option requires the least computer saavy - the others will all require at least a smattering of geekiness to be successfull.

If you can't boot from CD (unlikely) then you are pretty much going to have to send it back to Lenovo for repair. Have a good story or be prepared for a bill.

Good luck,

Ed Gibbs

I don't think you have a severe problem. Here's what you must do:
1. Find out your laptop HDD manufacturer, generally Thinkpads have Hitach drives, if so, go to www.hitachigst.com and download the DFT ISO (Drive Fitness Tool and burn it using Nero loading the ISO
2. Boot your laptop from that CD, browse through the menus and command the program to 'Erase Boot Sector'
3. After that is done, select 'Erase Disk' and wait until the green 'Operation succesfully completed' notice is displayed.
4. Reboot your laptop using your XP CD and 'Compatibility mode' activated in BIOS.
5. You should have no trouble installing XP, take my word.

Good luck

alosito wrote:How to I merge that unallocated space with the main partition? And can I merge it all or do I need to leave unallocated space anyway?

Vista has the capability to shrink/expand partition on the fly, while the OS is running; WinXP does not. You'll need a third-party app like Patition Magic. http://www.symantec.com/norton/products ... &pvid=pm80

There are likely third-party open source utilities that will let you resize paritions on the fly - but I'm not familiar with any first-hand.

BootItNG can usually fix this type of problem: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

It will also allow you to resize your partition. You can use the free evaluation of it. I have used it enough that I purchased it. You don't have to install it to your HD, you can use from a USB floppy or CD drive.

This problem solving page can be useful: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/category.php?id=52

Here is what I suggest: go to View MBR. You need to make sure the right partition is active in the MBR and also select Clear Signature and apply. Sometimes if that doesn't work then slightly moving or resizing a partition will fix problems.