Is the IBM service partition needed with Acronis image?

[tpham33]

Do I need to include the IBM Service hidden partition when I make an image of my hard drive for disaster recovery using Acronis True Image 11?
Do I even need to keep the IBM hidden partition on my hard drive if I don't use Rescue & Recovery? It seems like a waste of 4GB.

[Nick Y]

Do I need to include the IBM Service hidden partition when I make an image of my hard drive for disaster recovery using Acronis True Image 11?

No, although I made one back up of the partition to put on a DVD.

Do I even need to keep the IBM hidden partition on my hard drive if I don't use Rescue & Recovery? It seems like a waste of 4GB.

Although I haven't deleted mine, I don't think so. I am not sure if the Access IBM/ Blue button will do anything if you remove it, but then that may not be any great loss. It might be an idea to make an Acronis boot disc if you remove the partition.

[Superego]

If you're using TI then the hidden partition is kind of a waste...just be sure you have your recovery disks burned before you remove the partition.

Interestingly, Acronis TI lets you create your own hidden partition and store backups there. I don't use it as my backups are too big for that (I just external hard drives), but if you just want to backup portions of your hard drive, or the backups are small, you may want to try that (although it's kind of pointless if you're deleting R&R).