More comprehensive guide to HDD cloning

[GomJabbar]

As a final caveat: this is not properly a HDD cloning issue, but for Rescue and Recovery releases after 2.0, YOU MUST HAVE ALREADY MADE YOUR RECOVERY DISKS BEFORE INSTALLING ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE IN YOUR HDD SO YOU CAN SUCCESSFULLY USE FACTORY PRODUCT RECOVERY DISKS TO RECOVER THE INITIAL STATE. That is, you have to have already made them as nearly the first step you took with your new machine. IBM warned you – in small type on a single leaflet of paper tossed into the bottom of the box, no doubt.

I don't think that is exactly true. It is certainly the safe option. I do believe this is true in the case of the Rescue and Recovery updates or Client Security Software installation or updates. You certainly would want to create the Product Recovery Disc set before performing either of those updates. Also, you would want to create those discs before installing any other operating systems. Creating the Product Recovery Disc set is not a snapshot of what is installed at the time. It is created from other files present on the system. Some of these files however are part of Rescue and Recovery.

At any rate, the *best* procedure is to create the discs and actually use them at the very beginning before you have installed anything else. If they fail, you should be able to get a replacement set from Lenovo. Getting this set at a later date may be more difficult. There have been times when creating the Product Recovery Disc set fails (for one of several reasons). The software will only allow you to create one set, so be sure and use quality media.

An additional point however is that once you do perform a "Restore Factory Contents" either from the hard drive or using the Product Recovery Discs, you again get a chance to burn a Product Recovery Disc set!

Finally, a warning: Anytime you use the Product Recovery Disc set, ALL EXISTING PARTITIONS AND DATA ON THE HARD DRIVE WILL BE LOST!.
IIRC, restoring Factory Contents from the hard drive only overwrites the C: partition and data.

I haven't reviewed all this material in a year or so, so I may be a little rusty. But this is what I remember to the best of my recollection.

[carbon_unit]

An additional point however is that once you do perform a "Restore Factory Contents" either from the hard drive or using the Product Recovery Discs, you again get a chance to burn a Product Recovery Disc set!

Finally, a warning: Anytime you use the Product Recovery Disc set, ALL EXISTING PARTITIONS AND DATA ON THE HARD DRIVE WILL BE LOST!.
IIRC, restoring Factory Contents from the hard drive only overwrites the C: partition and data.

I haven't reviewed all this material in a year or so, so I may be a little rusty. But this is what I remember to the best of my recollection.

I just did a few recoveries this week using both the onboard recovery and the recovery discs. What you stated above is correct.

[R.G.]

Hmmm... thanks guys. Let me get that tuned up. I thought I had that right. More to come.

In any case, I think I have uncovered the heart of the beast - cloning a disk which has HPA and getting it to work with HPA later is at best a crapshoot, at worst impossible. That is of course where I entered this loop, and why I was so unsuccessful.

[R.G.]

OK, got some more updates done. I can't seem to get tables to come out in a forum posting, but that's a typography rather than content issue to be corrected later.

Comments and corrections appreciated.
=====================================
A More Comprehensive Guide To Cloning Thinkpad Hard Drives

Cloning Thinkpad hard drives is difficult because in doing so, you are put into the position of the blind men feeling of an elephant. It’s the same with Thinkpad drives. One Thinkpad is only one sample of a large space. There are many parts to a large issue, and even if you have successfully “felt” of your part of the elephant, your knowledge is not necessarily complete enough to advise the next guy who has the problem.

Things you need to know:
1. How do you want to do recovery in case of a drive or OS failure? Will you need to preserve the IBM or Lenovo-supplied Rescue, Repair and Recovery (RR&R) software/hardware scheme after cloning your drive or not, as a clear Yes or No. (See “RR&R” below for some background.)
2. Will you be making an exact clone, or will you be using cloning to install a larger sized HDD?
3. Does your model of Thinkpad have the HPA area? (See HPA below for some background.)
Once you do that, you can use the following table to select the process you need to follow.

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Keep RR&R?	Bigger/SameSize?	HPA?	Process to Follow
    No			Same Size	No			A
    No			Same Size	Yes			A
    No			Bigger		No			A
    No			Bigger		Yes			A
    Yes			Same Size	No			A
    Yes			Same Size	Yes			B
    Yes			Bigger		No			A
    Yes			Bigger		Yes			C

Processes:
There are only two practical results for most users.
A. Clone your HDD with an exact-copy program like Ghost or Acronis True Image with no particular oddities involved.
B. You must perform some BIOS manipulations before and after the cloning program and must be using a special HDD as the target.
C. You must be able to deal with special HDD and Linux-based tools as well as the RR&R software to save the HPA and your own user data to some other machine, clone the HDD, then restore the HPA to the protected area of the target HDD, and re-link the RR&R programs to the correct place in the new HDD.

Process A
This is the process already outlined in the “HDD cloning” portion of the FAQ. Simply perform disk cloning with a good disk-image program, following the caveats and advice. This process results in a workable image of the original drive in almost all cases. It works for both the Pre-HPA and Post-HPA Thinkpads, since RR&R in these units do not use hardware-hidden cylinders to hide (protect?) the RR&R data.

Some care is needed here. HPA and a similar technology, Disk Capacity Overlay (DCO) were specified as part of the ATA architecture at one point. It is likely that many disks have these features; the term “post-HPA” refers to IBM or Lenovo’s use of the HPA for RR&R.

Process B
Process B is useful only in the particular case where
(a) you are making a clone of the same HDD size
(b) you have a target HDD that supports the BEER/PARTIES architecture that allows hardware to hide portions of the disk from software
(c) you want to preserve the IBM provided RR&R recovery process

As many forum participants have noted, if you have a disk cloning program, it is simpler to do external cloning of your disk for backups, perhaps in combination with making boot/recovery disks which are not IBM-provided architecture RR&R. This approach also lets you recover the 2-5 GB of HDD space that the HPA uses.

But if you must preserve the IBM RR&R architecture and clone your HDD onto the same size HPA disk, here are the steps.
1. Press the power-on button and then press the “Access IBM” button as soon as the first splash screen appears, so you enter the BIOS setup.
2. Navigate the BIOS setup to the Security section.
3. Select “IBM Pre-Desktop Area” and change its status to “Disabled”.
4. Navigate back to the BIOS entry, save the changes and exit.
5. Follow the process outlined in the “HDD Cloning” portion of the FAQ for non-HPA drives, but be certain that your cloning program clones all sectors, not simply partitions. The HPA area sectors will be visible as raw sectors to copy, but will not appear to be partitions and will not be copied by programs that just copy partitions.
6. When cloning is done, power the machine off and before you re-boot the machine, remove either the source or the target disk from the machine. This gets around a quirk of Windows which labels a disk as to which disk letter it uses.
7. Follow steps 1 and 2 again, but in step 3, change the BIOS security setting for the IBM Pre-Desktop Area back to “enabled” or “secure”, whichever it was before you started this process; then save the settings and exit the BIOS.
8. Test the clone. This should go without saying, but the vast majority of backups are simply Write-Only Memory, and are never tested for function and accuracy until there is a failure. When you have your clone/backup done, ask yourself - do you feel lucky?

Process C
This is what most people with an HPA Thinkpad want to do. But it is possible only if you are willing to risk your disk contents, because of the complexity of the process and the need for non-Windows, Linux command line tools.

I have no experience with this (yet!). There is a set of utilities and a procedure for this at this link:
http://jamesie.de/thinkpad/index.en.html
The procedure is involved, and carries the possibility of total disk data loss if you mess up some of the command spellings, as it has to be carried out in command line instructions by booting your machine to Linux.
http://jamesie.de/thinkpad/index.en.html

In all of these cases, you must remove either the source HDD or the target HDD from the copying machine before rebooting to Windows. Some Windows versions “mark” partitions with their letter usage, and this may contaminate your target or source disk and make that disk not bootable.

Which Thinkpad do I have and does it have that evil HPA?

As of September 2008, as best I can tell, Thinkpads fall into the following buckets:
1. Pre-HPA machines which shipped with a factory recovery disk.
2. HPA style recovery, which eliminated the factory recovery disk with the machine.
3. Post-HPA machines, which used no factory recovery disks, but had a visible FAT-32 service partition.
4. Post-HPA machines, which use an NTFS service partition
5. At some point, a change was made from PATA/IDE to SATA controllers. However, the first SATA controller Thinkpads used PATA disks by including a SATA to PATA bridge chip. Yes, new controller style, old style disks. Later Thinkpads eliminated the SATA-to-PATA bridge and used SATA disks.

As a final caveat: this is not properly a HDD cloning issue; Rescue and Recovery releases after 2.0 may need previously existing recovery disks to have been made at some point to recover the entire disk contents to factory state. I have not unwound this complexity enough to know what, how much and so on.

Thinkpad models as regards HDD cloning:

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ThinkPad model 	release year 	HDD Type
Pre-2003 Models (mostly)		Pre-HPA with included Recovery disk
T23 and T30		                        Pre-HPA, R&Ra  2.0
		
2003 		
R40 	Jan 2003 	        HPAb
T40, T40p 	        Mar 2003 	        HPAb
X31 	                        Mar 2003 	        HPAb
G40                   	Apr 2003 	        HPAb
R40e 	Oct 2003 	HPAb
R50 	Oct 2003 	HPAb
T41 	Oct 2003 	HPAb
T41p 	Nov 2003 	HPAb
R50p 	Nov 2003 	HPAb
2004 		
X40 	Feb 2004 	HPAb
R50e 	Apr 2004 	HPAb
R51 	Apr 2004 	HPAb
T42,	May 2004 	Early ones have HPA, later ones Post HPA
T42p	May 2004 	HPAb 
G41 	Oct 2004 	?
2005 		
T43 	Feb 2005 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA to PATA, Error 2010c listed as having HPA
R52 	Mar 2005 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA to PATA, Error 2010clisten under having HPA
T43p 	Apr 2005 	R&Ra  3.0; SATA to PATA, Error 2010c listed as having HPA
X32 	Apr 2005 	HPAb
X41 	Apr 2005 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA to PATA, Error 2010c
X41 Tablet 	June 2005 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA to PATA, Error 2010c
Z60m 	Sep 2005 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
Z60t 	Sep 2005 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
R51e 	Sep 2005 	R&Ra  3.0
2006 		
T60 	Jan 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
X60 	Jan 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
X60s 	Jan 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
T60p 	Feb 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
R60 	May 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
R60e 	May 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
Z61e 	May 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
Z61m 	May 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
Z61t 	May 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
Z61p 	July 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
X60 Tablet 	Nov 2006 	Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
T61[1] 	May 2007 	Post HPA, R&Ra  4.0; SATA
R61		Post HPA, R&Ra  4.0; SATA
X61		Post HPA, R&Ra  3.0; SATA
X61s		HPAb
X61 tablet		HPAb

Retrieved from "http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_History"
a. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_and_Recovery
b. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Hidden_Protected_Area
c. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... hard_disks
Background for HDD disaster recovery for Thinkpads.
The earliest recovery system was one or more CDs which could restore the HDD content to the factory-shipped condition. For these systems, simple disk cloning programs work.
The earliest R&R versions (2.n?) were used on models T23 and T30. This used the R&R programs, but in a visible disk partition and did not ship with factory provided recovery disks. Simple disk cloning works.
HPA is hidden from hardware by BIOS commands to the HDD firmware, which then reports a smaller hard disk size by listing fewer cylinders. The access to the HPA is controlled by the BIOS setting of the “Pre Desktop Area” in Security settings. When the BIOS is set to “Disabled”, the extra cylinders are visible to other programs for copying.
However, this is a complex issue. First you must have a HDD that supports the BEER and PARTIES drive access architecture. Without that, the disk itself will not play well with the BIOS calls to the disk to change its hardware visible size.
The layout of data on the HDD has the Windows/boot partition first on the disk. The HPA is not at the front of the disk, but at the last few cylinders. When the BIOS calls make this area visible, it appears as unallocated space to any partition program I’ve yet found. So partition-copiers, even bit-for-bit partition copiers, will refuse to do anything with it because it’s apparently not in a partition.
Because of this, if you bit-clone, sector-clone, etc., the HDD into a new and larger disk, you get the Windows partition first, then the HPA in the cylinders at the end of the Windows partition, and nothing out at the end of the HDD. Even if you have a BEER/PARTIES compatible disk, the end of the disk where the changeable size exists is not written with the necessary data for the HPA to function correction in the Thinkpad.
A procedure for copying the image did not exist until recently; it’s at http://jamesie.de/thinkpad/index.en.html
Post-HPA R&R uses a hidden partition, but it does not use the hardware-hidden techniques of the HPA. Instead, a special driver hides the recovery partition from the OS. This gets very confusing because IBM literature uses “Pre-Desktop Area” as the single name for both HPA and non-HPA versions. HPA exists only for certain specific models.
It is not clear how, if at all, these later disks and RR&R relate to the Drive Capacity Overlay (DCO) method of making a HDD report smaller capacity than it actually has.
It has been reported that the T42 had early models with HPA and later models without HPA.
Another issue to be careful of is PATA versus SATA. Early Thinkpads were PATA (IDE or ATA). Later ones have gone to SATA. However, in the middle, there were Thinkpads which used PATA HDDs, but had a SATA controller on the motherboard, which ran the PATA HDD by means of a SATA-to-PATA bridge chip. For these models only, the HDD must have the correct firmware inside the HDD, or you will get the “Error 2010” on trying to boot a clone. You must either use an IBM/Lenovo HDD or flash update the OEM HDD you try to put into these machines to avoid this and get a bootable drive.
Things I found that helped me reach this current state of confusion:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/HPA
HPA United States Patent 7210013
http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/746 ... are_wp.pdf
http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.ws ... MIGR-46023
http://www.downloadpipe.com/system-uti ... 66308.html

http://www.utica.edu/academic/institute ... 4A2671.pdf

http://jamesie.de/thinkpad/index.en.html

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[spedlio]

Now I just quickly breezed over this topic, but from what I've see, people are trying to make a backup of their hdd, or copy to another hdd. Has anyone tried clonezilla? http://www.clonezilla.org Works great for me. Hope I'm ontopic!

[R.G.]

Now I just quickly breezed over this topic, but from what I've see, people are trying to make a backup of their hdd, or copy to another hdd. ... Hope I'm ontopic!

Almost, but not quite. Just getting a drive to clone is no trick. The reason I didn't talk about a specific cloning program is that there are many that will do the job just fine.

Most of the discussion is about why a simple clone copier is not enough, Clonezilla included. The drive cloning programs are fine for making a backup image for the same (or same type and capacity) HDD, but they cannot copy in a useful manner any of the "HPA" or "DCO" disks and have the resulting clone function correctly with the included Repair and Recovery programs.

Clonezilla, like the other image copiers, can't work around the hidden areas of the recovery partitions.

[bseeto]

GREAT JOB! R.G.

Like you, driven by curiosity, I have spent the most part of the last 2 days (and nights) researching the elusive HPA.

Here is the path I took to upgrade a T41 to a 160GB drive with the HPA migrated, without using linux. The procedure uses HPA aware utilities (FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR), so you DON'T have to change the BIOS setting. i.e. keep the predesktop setting on NORMAL.

Following the Appendix of the IBM HPA whitepaper : ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/ac ... a_aibm.pdf

a) Go to the predesktop (press the Access IBM button during bootup);
b) Double click the "Restore to Factory" icon, but DON'T restore just yet. Press F3 to leave. It will give you access to a DOS prompt.
c) Goto A:\RECOVERY>, there, you have access to the wonderful but seldom discussed FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR utilities.
d) Now, you can grab those two to a location of your choice. I just put them in C:
e) You cannot copy the HPA with those utilities directly onto the new drive. FWBACKUP allows you to make an image of it (the image is a bit over 3GB). In my case, I just free up some space in C:. Like underclocker said, you may choose to use a USB memory stick.
f) Use "FWBACKUP size=640 file=C:\IMG", that will give you a handful of 640M files in C:, filename starts with IMG;
g) Time to put the new drive in the thinkpad. Make sure it is blank, no partition, nothing on MBR.
h) I put the old drive in a USB case, bootup with a DOS bootable cd.
i) Use "FWRESTOR file=D:\IMG" and viola, you now have a HPA and a predesktop.
j) I then went on the use the predesktop to restore a fresh OS but I think you may clone the old harddisk on it using any cloning utility. I think ghost and most cloning program cannot see the HPA, thus will not accidentally over write it. But it might be better to change the BIOS setting (Security -> Predesktop) to secure before cloning.

[Dubhe]

Thanks, R.G.! You have given me insights that I haven't had before.

Thanks, bseeto! I think your method has merit.

I have a problem that I haven't read about before. I can get FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR from the hidden area as described in the IBM white paper. Then I cold boot the computer and RUN CMD to get a command prompt. I enter "FWBACKUP size=640 file=C:\IMG" and oops... get the error "program too big to fit in memory".

This is an absurd error, as the machine has 1.5G RAM and has just been cold booted. Pressing "CTRL-ALT-DEL" and clicking on the PERFORMANCE tab indicates free memory exceeding 1.2G. As another check, I entered "FWRESTOR /?" at the CMD prompt and it started up just fine, and it is a larger program...

So I am thinking that I have a corrupt FWBACKUP file. I have retrieved this file multiple times with the same result. Can I download this file from some archive somewhere? Or can I get it from one of you?

Puzzling....

[bseeto]

Try a bootable CD to boot into DOS instead (I used the ghost32 boot CD). I think it is easier to find out how to raise the limit of an XP CMD shell.

[Dubhe]

Thanks, bseeto!

Re-reading this thread made me think that I have the post HPA recovery scheme that uses a FAT32 service partition for recovery instead of the diabolically hidden HPA. This partition is visible from Windows Disk Manager, if not Windows itself.

Earlier I had tried cloning the disk to a larger drive with DiskImageXL. Either the hidden partition was not seen or cloned by that program, or I had done something wrong. After reading this thread, I decided to download Acronis TI11 and try cloning the disk again, using their cloning wizard set to automatic.

As a result, I get a fully bootable clone that seems to work just fine. No complaint from XP SP3, and the FAT32 service partition is accessible as before. I did notice that TI11 resized both partitions proportionally, so each partition is 4x larger than before. (I cloned a 40G to a 160G.)

No, here's the rub...

Booting the machine takes a looooong time to get to the BIOS splash screen, and even looooooooooonger to get to the XP splash screen. Then everything is fine.

So what's with that?

[AnitaC]

I've been trying to follow the procedure described above by bseeto, but for some reason I can't gain access to the fwbackup and fwrestor utilities.
When I F3 out of the "restore to factory" setting I end up in a DOS prompt in C:\RECOVERY>, but I can't get to the A:\RECOVERY> where I'm supposed to find the utilities. Whenever I type the commands it just returns to C:\

My machine's a R50 and the BIOS setting for the predesktop area is "Normal"

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong here?

[GomJabbar]

My machine's a R50 and the BIOS setting for the predesktop area is "Normal"

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong here?

I am fairly confident that the R50 does not use fwbackup or fwrestore. Those commands were for older model ThinkPads. You should be able to clone using Acronis or other cloning software. If you still have trouble, try a low level format of the target drive, then do the clone.

[AnitaC]

I am fairly confident that the R50 does not use fwbackup or fwrestore. Those commands were for older model ThinkPads. You should be able to clone using Acronis or other cloning software. If you still have trouble, try a low level format of the target drive, then do the clone.

Both Acronis and DriveImage XML only give the option to clone/backup the one visible partition (the C partition, 33 GB out of the 40GB the HD should be).
I have the option to revert to factory settings in the pre-desktop area (and have used it a couple of times) and the trwbook also states that the R50 have a disc-to-disc recovery option in a hidden protected area.

So shouldn't the HPA be there? And if so, wouldn't the fwbackup and fwrestor be the only way to migrate the HPA to another HD?

[GomJabbar]

I've only done this a couple of times, and that was awhile ago. See if the following threads are any help.

Hard Drive Cloning HOW TO

Safe to disable Predesktop Area for hard drive upgrade?

Making recovery cds more than once?

[bseeto]

I've been trying to follow the procedure described above by bseeto, but for some reason I can't gain access to the fwbackup and fwrestor utilities.
When I F3 out of the "restore to factory" setting I end up in a DOS prompt in C:\RECOVERY>, but I can't get to the A:\RECOVERY> where I'm supposed to find the utilities. Whenever I type the commands it just returns to C:\

My machine's a R50 and the BIOS setting for the predesktop area is "Normal"

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong here?

Is there anything in C:\RECOVERY or just in A:\?

[GomJabbar]

I see in Thinkwiki it says: "Use fwdir to verify that you have a HPA on the new drive." That should work with an existing drive as well. As I said, I will be surprised if an R50 has an HPA, although there seems to be some conflicting information around. I know my first T42 that was introduced in Aug. 2004 did not hava an HPA (PARTIES partition). My current T42 which I bought 2nd hand was introduced in May 2004, and it never would boot into Rescue and Recovery (it came dual-boot with Windows XP and Linux installed). I am not certain which technology my current T42 had when new.

Most new IBM computers available in 2003 will come with the HPA-based solution. The hidden protected area, also referred to as PARTIES, enables IBM to provide a disk-based recovery solution that provides greater flexibility and that enhances the security for recovery data, diagnostics and potential future applications.

IBM computers with this configuration were announced during 2003 and also have an ImageUltra disk image in the IBM_SERVICE partition.
* Location: A virtual partition that must be installed on the C drive (primary partition of the master hard disk drive) of the computer.
* Partition link: Links to the PARTIES partition to initiate a restore of factory contents or diagnostics.

IBM computers that are announced in the first quarter 2004 and come with the Rescue and Recovery environment preinstalled feature this configuration. See the following figure.
* Location: 100 percent in a type 12 partition.
* Location of factory recovery and system diagnostics: entirely in a type 12 partition.
* Location of backups: NOT in the type 12 partition.

EDIT: More info from the IBM document.

2. Copy the FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR tools from the factory recovery area in
the HPA using the following procedure:
a. Start the system and press the Enter key or the Access IBM button during
startup.
b. Double-click the Recover to Factory Contents icon. The Recovery Menu is
displayed.
c. Press the F3 key. A command prompt is displayed.
d. Change to the A: drive. (This is a virtual diskette drive in the hidden protected
area.)

[AnitaC]

Is there anything in C:\RECOVERY or just in A:\?

In C:\RECOVERY I have 238 files - all with the extensions .CRI and .IMZ and all named with a combination of letters and numbers - and 1 dir called IUSDK containing 2 files named CMAUBUS.IMD and CMAUBUSI.CRI

As for A:\ I never get to go there. Trying to change the directory to either A:\ or A:\RECOVERY and pressing "enter" just results in a return of C:\

I see in Thinkwiki it says: "Use fwdir to verify that you have a HPA on the new drive." That should work with an existing drive as well.

I tried using fwdir and it returned a lot of text which I took a photo of. Photo of text here Anyone know how to decode that?

I really appreciate all your input trying to solve this puzzle!

[GomJabbar]

From your screenshot, it does indeed appear to me that you have HPA/PARTIES.

I don't know why your system is not accessing the virtual diskette drive. You could try the same commands from the C:\Recovery folder and see what happens. Maybe that would work.

Alternatively you could try disabling security of the Predesktop Area, then do a sector based clone. Once the clone is complete, then set the Predesktop Security back to Normal.

[eecon]

Great topic folks ..... glad I saw this thread before trying to upgrade my T42's original 80GB HDD. I will scrap those plans for now as I really do not need the extra space on that occasional traveling unit.

[MelVic]

Thank you bseeto and to others who have contributed to this thread, i bought a T40 with a 40gig blank drive, i previously blew up my old T40 but i still had the original drive in tact, i got a T42 motherboard to replace the one that i blew up, i followed the steps in bseeto post and wow now the drive works like new including the access ibm, i did copy the fwrestore.exe and all the img files to a dvd.

[gidder]

hey r.g.,

obviously you know your cloning!

being new to thinkpads, and having sore eyes from reading all the threads on cloning here i need advice.

i just picked up a w500 and its all set up the way i want and im ready to preserve it with a clone. i do all my backups by way of monthly clones so i dont care about any of the extra lenovo service partitions or data recovery options and in a pinch id just turn on vista ultimate system restore and set a quick restore point.

i use ghost from a floppy which has successfully cloned my desktop more times then i can count and the plan is to do the laptop drive cloning through my pc, yes everything is sata.

side note, id like to pick up two hitachi 320's to replace the 160 it came with (good deal at the lenovo outlet!)

any info on how you would attack the process would be great, thanks

ps. i know 320 is a pretty big drive so im open to hearing any reasons for keeping any lenovo installed backup system

[eecon]

....... side note, id like to pick up two hitachi 320's to replace the 160 it came with (good deal at the lenovo outlet!)

any info on how you would attack the process would be great, thanks

ps. i know 320 is a pretty big drive so im open to hearing any reasons for keeping any lenovo installed backup system

Here you go:

http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 18&t=74358

and

http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 18&t=73954

I now have 4 of the Hitachi 7K320 320GB HTS723232L9SA61 #0A57527 units with Hardware-Based Encryption (one in the main bay and one in the UltraBay Adapter plus another pair for weekly clones of each .... Much less worries here if my traveling ThinkPad is ever stolen with regards to my clients' data. My clients are satisfied with the steps I've taken .... so much so in fact, that all 6 of them had their MIS departments order new replacement Hitachi BDE and/or Seagate FDE drives for all their existing and new laptops)

[gidder]

eecon thanks for the reply,

and apologies for not including you in on knowing your cloning stuff because your posts were all very informative.

i did go back and read your posts over and im good with setting up passwords on the new drives but i do need more advice with what to do with the 2 extra lenovo partitions.

could i:
install the new bde and set up the password as you instructed then remove then put both drives in my pc and do a straight clone with ghost then upon installation into the laptop remove the two lenovo partitions?

or:
?

like i said in my original post, i really dont care about the lenovo r&r stuff because most of the drivers have all been updated anyway so an r&r would put me back to factory and who wants to be there? i dont care about backing up data because all my work is on networked drives anyway.

again thanks

[eecon]

eecon thanks for the reply,

and apologies for not including you in on knowing your cloning stuff because your posts were all very informative.

i did go back and read your posts over and im good with setting up passwords on the new drives but i do need more advice with what to do with the 2 extra lenovo partitions.

could i:
install the new bde and set up the password as you instructed then remove then put both drives in my pc and do a straight clone with ghost then upon installation into the laptop remove the two lenovo partitions?

or:
?

like i said in my original post, i really dont care about the lenovo r&r stuff because most of the drivers have all been updated anyway so an r&r would put me back to factory and who wants to be there? i dont care about backing up data because all my work is on networked drives anyway.

again thanks

I'd first make a set of Product Recovery Disks while you still have the Lenovo Service Partitions. Then I'd uninstall via Control Panel the Lenovo R&R and CSS (Note that this does not delete the hidden Lenovo Service Partition). Then if you really, really, really want to delete the Service Partitions, just use Windows Disk Management to delete those partitions and leave them as unallocated space on your HDD. Run a defrag and then use your cloning SW in manual mode to clone to the new larger HDD with the setting set to make the new HDD proportionally larger (thus using up all your 320GB of new HDD space). If you do not want a single 320GB partition ..... for instance, say you want 2 equally sized partitions on the new 320GB HDD, then set the cloning SW to make the new clone about half the size of the new HDD and then after you boot up with the new one, go back into Windows Disk Management and create a new logical drive for the remaining half of the unallocated space.

It's all pretty simple common sense stuff ..... however, I personally prefer to keep the Hidden Service Partition on any HDD that I'm using since it only takes up about 4 to 5 GB and Murphy's law says I'll lose my recovery disks in a year or two when the time comes to reset the Laptop to original Factory State before selling it on eBay (then I have to spend $50 to have Lenovo send me a new set of Factory Recovery Disks)

[sir_eccles]

Hi guys, I appreciated reading all the threads on cloning and I just joined to provide my experience of cloning my Thinkpad hard drive so if anyone like myself is searching Google for help they have an extra data point and a bit of a step by step description for the lay reader so they know what to expect.

- Thinkpad R51e (model 1843 6NG)
- Upgrading from the original 40Gb drive to a 160Gb Seagate Momentus 5400.3 (ST9160821A)
- EZ upgrade kit with EZ Gig II (version 10.0 build 5,114 just in case someone is keeping track)

I had read this and other websites intensively trying to work out the best way to do it. To be honest I was concerned when I had read all the scary stories about Thinkpads and needing to swap the drives first, fiddle with BIOS settings etc. Then I read somewhere else that running EZ Gig II from Windows was a better way to do it. So...

- I left the original drive in the laptop.
- Did a little house cleaning (disk cleanup, defrag, backup image using R&R).
- Installed EZ Gig II (reboot needed).
- I put the new drive in the USB enclosure and connected it to the laptop.
- Ran EZ Gig II from Windows.
- Set partition sizes manually, leaving the service partition pretty much the same size as the original.
- Pressed OK.

It then said it needed to reboot which it did into the EZ Gig software environment showing the progress of the three stages (main partition, service partition, MBR). I then had dinner because I was hungry

- Pressed the any key to shutdown when prompted.
- Unplugged the USB enclosure, power and battery.
- Took out the old drive.
- Swapped over the cradle.
- Inserted the new drive.
- Powered up, nervously.
- Noted the "EZ Gig II complete" message flash on the screen.
- Windows XP up and running, tada, wipe brow!

All in all it seems to have gone quite well. I now have a good 100+ spare Gb to play with rather than the <1Gb previously. Hope this helps anyone else feeling nervous about upgrading.

[gw4frx]

For what it’s worth, I have just upgraded the original 40GB Hitachi HDD in my R50e (1834xxx) to a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250GB by using a very similar procedure to that described by Sir Eccles. The operating system is a fully patched version of WinXP SP3 and has all the current Lenovo updates.

I used the free version of Acronis TrueImage v10.0 and mounted the new disc in an external caddy, connecting via a USB cable. Being curious to see what happened, I didn’t change any BIOS settings initially. Acronis correctly recognised both the main NTFS partition and a hidden FAT partition which I assumed was where the Rescue and Recovery backup was stored.

The procedure went very smoothly and on swapping the old and new drives over the R50e booted up and worked normally, exhibiting a 204GB main partition. I deleted the old R & R backup and did a new one, which worked with no problems.

Hope that helps someone.

[sguttag]

Okay...I think I'm in the right place. I have:

Thinkpad R40 2897-83U.

It has a 20GB HDD that is now full. I would like to install a larger HDD and move my stuff over to that one and continue on my merry way. I have, as have others, been thwarted in this effort pretty handily.

This far, we have bought a new PATA drive (Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250GB Mobile HD). Using an external computer, we have cloned the internal drive using Ghost 2003. The drive does indeed clone, from what we can tell. However, once it is installed in the Thinkpad, it refuses to boot. I get a blinking underscore cursor in the upper left and that is it.

If I boot from a WinXP CD (that is the operating system), it finds the Windows stuff on the hard disk just fine...you can see most anything on the disk...it just refuses to boot from it. We've tried the various switches in Ghost but nothing seems to work.

Also of note, we have had to use another computer to do the cloning because with Ghost running the show, it refuses to recognize the "other" drive that is connected via a USB dongle. The BIOS sees both drives just fine but Ghost seems to have the issue.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for making this transfer work? Is the 250GB drive an issue since this computer only ever was offered with up to 60GB (or maybe 80GB)? I don't much care if I get all 250GB...I'd settle for much less.

Is Ghost part of my issue. I've read above where some have had no problem with Ghost...I don't own it or the dongle, those I've borrowed.

Can someone give me a sure fire way of making this work? I'm not as concerned about keeping the IBM preformatted stuff I just want a working drive. This will be the last upgrade for this computer.

Thanks,

Steve

[Neil]

@Steve - Welcome to the forum! As you have no doubt already read, this cloning process works much better when the new drive in installed in the ThinkPad HDD bay, with the old drive (usually) in a USB enclosure. If that can't be done, then another option would be to make a back-up image of the old drive on an external drive of some kind, put the new drive in the ThinkPad, and restore the image to the new drive.

[sguttag]

Thanks Neil,

I think the problem is that putting the new drive in the computer leaves me with no means to talk with the other drive. The BIOS sees both drives but the cloning software does not see the drive brought in via USB.

-Steve

[Neil]

the cloning software does not see the drive brought in via USB.

Well...it should! Try different software, there are plenty of choices after all. Acronis has worked well for me, and they offer a free trial...so why not try it?