set up new 160g seagate hard drive for T40

[jsme304]

Hi...
new to this forum and thinkpad laptops...
had the t40 for about a month...
in the process of changing out the 40g hard drive for a new/ clean 160g seagate ulta ATA drive ...

Iwould like to set up the drive as original IBM as i can... is there a way to access the hidden IBM partition on my current drive, and copy it to the seagate drive
or.. how can i, get a copy of the Product recovery cd, T40 is out of warranty... unit has Windows XP prof.

thanks for any help...
been reading this forum for a while...

[richk]

The programs for copying the HPA recovery area are FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR. You can find them using Google, but I never had any luck using them on disks that were not the same size as the original. The latest T40 disks I know of are XP SP1, which means lots of updates. I can make you copies for my costs, but I am out of town until Monday. Perhaps someone else can reply sooner.

[egibbs]

I just swapped out the 60 GB in my T42p for a 160 GB. I used Drive Image to copy the whole drive. Had it keep the Service Partition the same size and expand the c: partition to fill the rest of the drive (had to do that by manually setting the sizes in DI).

Worked perfectly, booted right to Windows with no issues, and I verified that it can still boot to Rescue and Recovery by pressing the blue key at startup.

Ed Gibbs

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum, jsme304!

What you basically want to do - I guess?! - is to transfer all files (incl. the operating system) and also the hidden "Access IBM" service partition from your old to your new disk. If I am correct in this assumption, you may find much information (all! necessary information) on this forum - search for "clone harddisk".

Many people, incl. I, make use of the program "Acronis True Image" (ATI) for this purpose (search and you shall find!). While you may download a fully functional (although time-limited, but fully suitable for your "one-time need") version of ATI from their homepage, I recently learned that Seagate has in all secrecy made available a free version (although slightly limited at a few points) of Acronis True Image through their program "Discwizard" - read more in the thread How to create bootable restore disk? (see the post by RealBlackStuff of Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:22 am). I haven't tried this Seagate-version of ATI, but I suggest you browse the above thread.

Best regards,

Johan

[richk]

The T42p uses an entirely different recovery process than the T40/41. The same process will not work.

[jsme304]

Thanks...

since the time I started this message...
I installed windows xp from one of my microsoft XP disks... worked fine and then down loaded main driver to desk top pc and transferred to t40... so I could get online ... then just down loaded rest of the driver... worked perfect...

then I downloaded Seagate Diskwizard... bought a cheap hdd
enclosure and cloned the original hard drive to the seagate hdd..

when I was looking at getting a laptop... the IBM/levoro were the easiest to change out parts, etc.
and had service info online

all my desk top pc's were started from barebones units..

again, thanks for all the info on this forum...

[frankiepankie]

I had no problems with a Compaq Armada E500 with cloning disks.

I had a 40GB sitting in the Compaq Armada E500, but i needed the 40GB in my A21m

I had a 6GB lying around, so i cloned the Windows XP from the 40GB on the 6GB disk, and it worked without a problem

(Ofcourse, you need enough free space on the new disk)

[zdriver]

Just wanted to add that Seagate's Disc Wizard has one caveat to use it - one of the drives must be a Seagate drive. The source or target drive does not matter. At least this was the case with all the versions I have had.
Works great if you can meet that requirement...

[crashnburn]

I've used Acronis but I am curious to use Seagates Tools.