unable to restore hidden partition HPA on "unsupported

[croooowe]

That is definitely not what I was expecting. What is the first dics labeled as?

[mamamia]

ah, finally figured it out.
(by the way, 5 disks is ok. it depends on the laptop. i guess X series has less. and on my X31 the partition only is 2 gigs)
i updated the firmware, so it thinks it's an ibm drive (you have to hack it, but the method is listed in this forum).
i used the hitachi utility (go download it from their site) to wipe the mbr and wipe the disk.
i used the recovery cd's, and it asked me if i wanted to restore the partition. in the very beginning, after i put in the first disk.