Remove X300 R&R hidden partition

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82vet · #1 Post by **82vet** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 4:13 pm

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to remove the hidden (rescue & recovery) partition on the X300? Its eating up 4Gb of valuable space and having burnt R&R disks i dont need it

On other ThinkPads i have had it was in the BIOS, first you shut of PreDesktop area or something similar then you could manipulate/delete the partition.

I cannot find anywhere in the X300 BIOS where I can shut it off and i cannot delete/change it in diskmgmt. And significant internet searches turned up nothing.

Thanks in advance

AJV

#2 Post by **erik** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 6:57 pm

as stated in this post on the lenovo forum by a lenovo employee there isn't a hidden partition on the X300. i just did a clean install of vista business x64 on mine and didn't find any extra partitions on the drive.

this is a 64GB SSD with 4GB reserved for table failures, actually making it a 60GB drive. formatting leaves you with 59.62GB of usable space.

diskpart.exe will view any hidden partitions if you still want to try and find one (although i guarantee it doesn't exist

).

if you haven't done it already, disabling hibernation will give you some space back. i have 4GB in my X300 and turning it off gave me back about 4GB total.

82vet · #3 Post by **82vet** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:28 pm

First thanks for your input. I appreciate it. I have had many ThinkPads over the years but this issue is confounding me.

So like you, I did just do a clean install of Vista Business (SP2) wiping out XP. Now from my clean install if I type in diskmgmt.msc what I see is the following;

C: NTFS 40.66 GB - My operating system drive
D: NTFS 15.00 GB - My data drive
(no label) EISA 3.97 GB - This is what I am trying to delete and add to another partition, I assumed it was a hidden R&R partition as diskmgmt cannot access, change, or delete it.

running diskpart.exe, select disc 0, detail disk, reports;

volume 1 C 41GB
volume 2 D 15GB

Which again adds to 56GB leaving me a full 8GB from stated capacity and 4GB (the size of the EISA partition) short of the 60GB you have, and say I should have.

I only have 2 GB RAM right now so I dont think this is a hybernation partition.

Again thanks for your input and any new thoughts given this added info?

82vet · #4 Post by **82vet** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:31 pm

Also, contrary to the Lenovo post you refer to; I was able to create rescue & recovery disks from my X300 (one bootable CD and one DVD) and it did not come with R&R disks in the box as the Lenovo post says it should.

reading further the Lenovo emplyee states;

"Turns out I need to qualify this. The above is a Vista preload statement only. The XP preload does have a service partition and the ability to restore to factory contents from the drive. It is possible (and, as billmorrow hinted, highly recommended) to make a set of recovery CDs, as a set is not shipped with Windows XP preload systems."

As I have an XP preload, on which I have now installed Vista (the XP load was what they had in stock) I do have a service partition which is what I need help getting rid of.

Thanks

#5 Post by **erik** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:46 pm

i checked again with both diskmgmt and diskpart and cannot find any hidden partitions. the disk appears to be 60GB total.

try disabling hibernation and see if the rogue EISA partition goes away. to do this, run a command prompt as an admin and type powercfg -h off.

mine had a vista business preload and recovery media for both vista and XP were included in the box. given what you've said, perhaps the XP preloads are different.

can you select the EISA partition in diskpart and force delete it? once you've selected it, the command is delete partition override.

also, is your SSD made by samsung or TDK? this could create yet another variable. mine is a samsung.

82vet · #6 Post by **82vet** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:16 pm

Mine is a samsung as well.

Turning off hybernation had no effect.

I cant seem to select it under diskpart.exe I am not that familiar with diskpart.exe so it could be my fault.

I was always under the impression you had to disable a setting in BIOS which would remove protection from the R&R partition and allow it to be deleted.

I have look at all the options in my BIOS and see no applicable setting.

#7 Post by **ryengineer** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:22 pm

82vet wrote:snip....(no label) EISA 3.97 GB - This is what I am trying to delete and add to another partition, I assumed it was a hidden R&R partition as diskmgmt cannot access, change, or delete it.....snip

That is in fact the hidden partition.

Lenovo has removed the option of "Predesktop" security on new thinkpads starting from *61 series so don't bother looking in the BIOS.

See the procedure of hidden partition's removal starting from the following post:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 320#401320

82vet · #8 Post by **82vet** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:27 pm

Looks like thats what I need. I'll try it in the morning and report back on the results.

Thanks for the tip!!

#9 Post by **gator** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:24 pm

rye, thanks for pointing that out. I did not know that.

#10 Post by **erik** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:40 pm

ryengineer wrote:That is in fact the hidden partition.

i just ran gparted and the only unallocated space is 1.00 MiB from sectors 0 through 2047. that's less than 1 MB.

unallocated: 0-2047 (1.00 MiB)
/dev/sda1: 2048-125042687 (59.62 GiB)

device information says the following...
model: ATA SAMSUNG MCCOE64G
size: 59.62 GiB
path: /dev/sda

am i missing something here? i still don't see any evidence of a hidden partition on mine.

craigg · #11 Post by **craigg** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:33 pm

My usable drive is the same as Eric's, 59.6 GB, which is equal to approximately 64 billion bytes, the advertised capacity.

#12 Post by **erik** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:15 pm

i'm standing by my original statement that no hidden partition exists on the X300. i've tried everything i know and can't find one whatsoever. all i see is a boot sector and 59.62 GB of usable space as reported by both diskpart (which can see hidden partitions, fyi) and gparted.

#13 Post by **ryengineer** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:53 pm

Erik, your X300 doesn't have hidden partition but 82vet's does.

I'm sure we all are familiar with base-2 (used by an OS) and base-10 (used by HDD manufacturers) mathematical system here.

Base-10's 64GB would be 59.63GB (the maximum size your X300 would report) in base-2.

When the user (82vet) would claim the hidden partition’s space on his/her X300 the space would add up to 59.63GB (40.66+15+3.97GB).

Just a note, EISA is the computer industry's standard for hidden partition so yes X300 can have hidden partition under Windows XP.

82vet · #14 Post by **82vet** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:24 am

First thanks to all who helped! Much appreciated!

Ok I can report the following;

1) My X300 (system 6478-1VU) with an XP pre-load did in fact come with a hidden partition. There was no media in the box and I was able to create R&R media straight from the X300. I immediately removed XP and installed Vista Business (SP1).

2) The hidden drive is an EISA drive that diskmgmt.msc can see and report on but cannot manipulate in any way.

3) Using GParted (force VESA mode) I was very easily able to delete the hidden partition. Then booting back into Vista I was able to use diskmgmt.msc and add the 4GB onto my D drive. Note: it would have been a bit more complicated if I only had a C (boot drive) as i believe diskmgmt.msc does not allow you to manipulate the boot partition.

My total usable capacity is now the 60GB that we all seem to agree should be available.

Just a note, while I applaud Lenovo and the ThinkPad team for the idea and intent behind the hidden R&R partition there should be an easier way to recover that valuable disk space (for those who choose) especially in the case of X300 with the already small SSD.

Thanks again to all who helped

#15 Post by **erik** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 9:03 am

it's odd that XP preloads have a service partition and vista ones do not. perhaps it's because of the size of vista in comparison to XP.

what threw me about the EISA acronym is that i've always known it as a bus port.

oh well, i stand corrected; not all X300s have a service partition--only ones with XP do.

thanks for the info, ryan.

Azul · #16 Post by **Azul** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:56 pm

I can confirm my xp preload has a 4gb hidden partition. I also only have a C: drive, but gparted will allow not only deleting the partition but also resizing the main ntfs partition. I will try this tonight and report back.

The one time I did this before, I did have to restore the Vista boot header using a bootable Vista media. Be warned if you try this that you should have media handy.

stules · #17 Post by **stules** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:23 pm

My pre loaded XP had a hidden partition. I deleted it before the clean install using this proceedure.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthr ... ight=clean
It worked fine.

jamess · #18 Post by **jamess** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:29 am

My X300 I received the day before yesterday doesn't have hidden partition w/Windows Vista.

I would however like to remove some files left from the factory restore (I was hoping I could perform custom factory restore but it is indeed impossible). Even when I booted with supplied DVD's and went through the procedure, setting everything up... I tried entering thinkvantage recovery space pressing the blue button, but again, custom factory restore is not possible - it sasy (there is no recovery partition on this computer.. or something like that). So NO custom factory restore.

Can somebody please tell me which of the following I am safe to delete completely on C:
SWShare
SWTOOLS
DRIVERS

Other than that, the X300 is great overall and pretty much everything impressed me - except the LCD display. It is VERY (and i mean VERY) bright, almost too bright, but viewing angles and colors compared to X61 TAblet SXGA - are worse than the Tablet.

I get 4h 50 min with 6C battery doing internet, basic office work listening to music and with max brightness... which i think is good for such a light package.

#19 Post by **erik** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:41 am

jamess wrote:Can somebody please tell me which of the following I am safe to delete completely on C:
SWShare
SWTOOLS
DRIVERS

toss these directories on a DVD just for backup purposes and remove all three from the SSD. it'll save you about 2.2GB iirc.

jamess · #20 Post by **jamess** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:41 am

cool! thanks for that.

regards

Remove X300 R&R hidden partition

Remove X300 R&R hidden partition

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