Lenovo´s recovery cds + clean installation + HD partitions

[Marin85]

Hi,
I have some questions related to recoveries and HD partitions and I´ll be very happy to find someone answer these as I really intend doing these things depending on the answers. So, this person will determine my life for the next couple of days Now the questions:

1. If I delete the hidden partition of my ThinkPad, shall I then stil have all other functions of the predesktop area working for me (since they are related rather to R&R)?

2. Supposed I have deleted the hidden partition, would it be then possible to restore the manifactural content of my HD by using Lenovo´s recovery cds?

3. Any suggestions for good partition manager? How much space should I leave for C:\ if I´m considering installing software like Matlab or this question doesn´t make sense as my partition manager can reassemble my disk space at any time?

4. I´m considering doing a clean installation as I believe it would increase XP performance. I´ve read a lot about people in this forum having done it but never found a kind of a guide for this. Let me put it in this way: I´m just not very good at searching for drivers and installing and reinstalling them. Any hints regarding XP installation will be also appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Marin

[DAH]

Hi,
I have some questions related to recoveries and HD partitions and I´ll be very happy to find someone answer these as I really intend doing these things depending on the answers. So, this person will determine my life for the next couple of days Now the questions:

1. If I delete the hidden partition of my ThinkPad, shall I then stil have all other functions of the predesktop area working for me (since they are related rather to R&R)?

Just what features are you talking about, you will no longer be able to press the BlueButton at boot time and have it take you anywhere.

2. Supposed I have deleted the hidden partition, would it be then possible to restore the manifactural content of my HD by using Lenovo´s recovery cds?

I have been able to do this with a set of CDs obtain from Lenovo for my T60, I would assume so, but I've never done it with a Z60.

3. Any suggestions for good partition manager? How much space should I leave for C:\ if I´m considering installing software like Matlab or this question doesn´t make sense as my partition manager can reassemble my disk space at any time?

Well not knowing how big your hard drive actually is, and what you intend to do with the other partitions it doesn't really make sense...

4. I´m considering doing a clean installation as I believe it would increase XP performance. I´ve read a lot about people in this forum having done it but never found a kind of a guide for this. Let me put it in this way: I´m just not very good at searching for drivers and installing and reinstalling them. Any hints regarding XP installation will be also appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Marin

Perhaps you should consider getting someone to walk you through this then, if you are really not good at finding drivers, and installing them, I would recommend not doing it as you are more likely to create problems than solve them. It's possible to give remote control of your computer to someone else, and allow them to update the drivers for you, you might think about that. I have use that method in the past.

[ryengineer]

1. On a clean install with no Predesktop area, R n R backups will be saved on primary partition of your HDD, and you can install almost all components of ThinkVantage Downloads. Your question is not very clear and I can only think of things I stated above.

2. Yes, anytime.

4. Please go to the bottom of this thread and look for the instructions GomJabbar posted. You can install the Thinkvantage System Update afterwards, it will gather available drivers with critical patches, tools and applications for your system if it does not then you can install them manually for your machine via this page.

[DAH]

Well you shouldn't have to go more than a few post down on this board to find a post call "Is system 3 update rubbish" while it should do what you need, my and others experience is that it no longer does.

If your OS is English there are many here who would be willing to help, if it's something else, it may be much harder to find the correct download, or get meaningful help.

It would also help to know that with some programs you download from Lenovo and click on run and the driver installs, on most you click on run, and the program extracts to a folder, you now need to find that folder (did you write the name down?) and the program within it that actually installs the driver.

[Marin85]

Hi guys,
Thanks a lot for your help. You gave me exactly the information I needed to know. Now, as for my third question, my HD is 120 GB (but I'm considering getting the new 7K200) and I 'd like to make two partitions of my HD, C and D drive (apart from the hidden one) as in the good old times. C should cover all my programs needed for my work and research activity as well as all other system files of XP (as usual). On D I intend to store any Documents, Music and Movies and things like these. What I need for my work is mainly Matlab (about 3 GB after installation) and SPSS. Maybe I should have put my question so: without installing anything else, what space do XP files take on a new ThinkPad? Furthermore, I'm not aware of any features of installed XP which make it possible to devide one's HD however and whenever he wants to. Please correct me if I'm wrong but you need a different program to do this, so I was asking for any suggestions on such a program (since I don't know any).

My XP is in German, so I guess I could hardly find someone to make a clean installation for me. However, I received my recovery CDs from Lenovo. Additionally, I was very unofficialy told that using these CDs I could change the language of my fresh reinstalled system I don't know if it's true.

And thanks again for your help and the links!

Marin

[GomJabbar]

Regarding #1. You can delete the hidden partition, then install Rescue and Recovery to have access to it's backup and restore features. You can create a Rescue Media CD (do this before deleting anything) that will boot into basically what you see in the Predesktop Area. You can restore a rescue and recovery backup from here.

You should be able to create a set of Product Recovery Discs while you still have the hidden partition (this is what you called Lenovo recovery CD's).

[DAH]

I've got a semi fresh install of XP Pro (Lenovo recovery CDs) it's about a week or so old, and it's at 17.5 GB at the moment. As far as changing the language, I believe this is a yes and no answer. I'm not as blessed as you, I'm stuck with my poor English, but you are prompted which language to install, as part of the Windows initialization. **If your default language is other than English** I believe you can pick another language and it will install in that language. Lenovo installs a number of programs before you are prompted for the language choice, some of these **could** default to the default language for your computer.

[DAH]

I would recommend you take a look at Acronis® Disk Director Suite 10.0 you can download a free fully working trial here. That would allow you to do what you want. Just don't install it until you are ready to use it.

[Marin85]

Hi,
thanks for your help, guys! I appreciate it very much, it was really very helpful for me to decide what to do.
@GomJabbar: Thanks for the good idea. In this way I don't need the hidden partition afterwards. As to Lenovo's recovery CDs I actually meant a set of 3 DVDs (sry, I wasn't precise , my fault) I have recently received from Lenovo; these would restore the complete initial content of my HDD.
Do these DVDs then make any use of the hidden partition while restoring my system? Do they recreate the hidden partition if it was deleted before?
The guide included there says that the content of all partitions is going to be erased after starting the process.

@DAH: Thanks for the useful info. It's good to know if one's going to do what I intend to

Just one question more (but probabely not the last one ): Is there any way to create my own hidden partition on my HDD (and even update it) which I could access through the PreDesktop area even when everything else doesn't work?

Thanks again

Marin

[carbon_unit]

The restore discs will wipe out all existing partitions and create two partitions, one hidden for the restore and one for Windows. It will then install R&R into the restore partition along with the disc image. Then after a reboot it will boot into R&R and restore windows from the image in the newly created restore partition. Depending on the version of R&R you may be able to do custom backups and restores.
If you want to do your own restore without using R&R you can use Acronis True Image to make an image and create a "Secure Zone" to store it in. The secure zone is a hidden partition that uses F11 at boot time and boots right into Acronis and allows you to restore your computer from the image you created. It works similar to R&R but goes much faster. You can also pick and choose individual files to restore.

[DAH]

The restore discs will wipe out all existing partitions and create two partitions, one hidden for the restore and one for Windows. It will then install R&R into the restore partition along with the disc image. Then after a reboot it will boot into R&R and restore windows from the image in the newly created restore partition. Depending on the version of R&R you may be able to do custom backups and restores.

This has NOT been my experience. In my experience R&R first creates a temporary area where it copies all the files necessary to restore windows on your PC. It reboots into this area and starts to rebuild your windows installation. At this point in time one generally has two partitions on your drive the primary partition and a second drive X. As part of the final installation the X drive is changed into the hidden partition. My experience is if you interrupt the recovery process you will not have the hidden partition, available to you. There are I believe different versions of R&R , perhaps all don't operate in this way?

[carbon_unit]

There are many different versions of Rescue and recovery out there and some versions operate differently than others. Some have a hidden partition, some use HPA, not sure how the new one works.
It is difficult to make a broad statement about Rescue and recovery because it is a moving target.
Regardless of how it does it. The fact remains that running the cd's will wipe out all of your non-factory partitioning and return the computer to factory condition.

[Marin85]

Hi,
thanks for your help! Reading your posts I've already decided what to do after reinstalling my system. Besides that, I'd like to create two partitions of my HDD (C for my programs and XP and D for everything else). How can I do it? (I guess I need a specific program.)

Regards,

Marin

[DAH]

If it is a one time thing you might want to try the free trial for Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 It should do everything you need to do. I have in the past used Lenovo R&R to restore my system to factory defaults, used Acronis to resize the partition, and create the new partition. Note that my version of R&R uses only the hidden area within the original C: drive to store system backups. That may or may not be important to you. I'm dual booting into both Vista and XP and had assumed that R&R would use which ever disk it was installed on. This does not seem to be the case for me. Anyway you can use the free trial to do what you want. The changing partition sizes can take most of the day or night by the way. It might be something you want to run while sleeping (overnight).

[Marin85]

Hi,
o.k. now I understand. Acronis offers products for both things I am looking for. Thanks again for your help!

M.