T41 HDD upgrade

[dwagner3210]

I have read so many posts over the last few days re: upgrading HDD in a T41 that I am sick. The big problem I am having is cloning this recovery area.

I have went into BIOS and set the PreDesktop area to disabled for all these attempts. I have tried several different pieces of software to attempt this clone. I am trying to clone main 40G HDD still in T41 to new 320G western digital drive temporarily installed in an external USB case and then install the cloned 320G as the main drive after clone.

Started with Acronis free eval version and determined that the boot disk one does not work in demo (not quite a great demo if some pretty key features do not work). So i ran the version from windows and it seemed to recognize the hidden partition. Was forced to reboot Winxp and then it went into a DOS like session and cloned drive. However, hidden partition was not there. My test is if I can take large drive out of case and replace the main HDD and then turn the predesktop area back on in BIOS. Not sure if that is good test. The normal data and programs on HDD were cloned in this attempt but not predesktop area. I have tried other software to clone and always same result: main drive clones but not predesktop area. Mind you various other small annoyances with other attempts but in the end no predesktop area. I have tried HD CLONE, Ghost and western digital bootable Lifeguard data transfer tool. I have also borrowed a friends full version of Acronis and nada!

I am at the point of just living with data/program only cloning and keeping old drive for emergency recover uses. It really makes me frustrated that this is only way i get access to recovery. No discs came with machines and we ordered 4 of these models from IBM at the time.

Any last minute suggestions before I have a small 40G paper weight.

[sjthinkpader]

Normal way to do this is to place your old HDD in a Ultrabay tray or USB housing and the new HDD in the HDD slot. Boot from the Acronis or Apricorn CD and start the cloning process. SW will should you the partition format.

[dwagner3210]

I tried this way as well today and same result. In Acronis, the hidden partition shows as unallocated so I do not think it is even considering cloning it.

Just stinks that IBM has made this so hard. It is like they think people never will upgrade machine.

[sktn77a]

You could buy a set of T41 recovery CDs for about $25. If you have several computers, this might be the way to go. Recovery partition will be created on the new drives.

[closersource]

You might want to clone the entire drive over instead of doing the separate partitions. Even if the new drive is much bigger you can expand the partition later. Make sure you mark the cloned drive Active and make sure that when Acronis is done to shut down. Before turning on again move the new drive from your Ultrabay in to your main bay and do not reconnect the old drive.

[dwagner3210]

I had heard they were $45 I will look into that option. I really wanted to avoid having to reinstall all my software though. I have quite a bit especially specific setup and configurations for different clients

I believe i am cloning entire drive just does not want to copy unallocated (hidden partition). I am not using the ultra bay setup rather a USB drive as i do not have ultra bay caddy.

I had read about making sure other drive is not hooked up during reboot or lots of problems with drive mapping thanks for that tip.

[jamnkats]

I am trying to do this same thing and have no problem creating the recovery partition. I'm using Partition Manager 10.0. My problem is expanding the C partition (on the new 160GB drive) after the copy is complete. The 160GB newly copied drive works perfectly - I just want the C partition to be larger, but since the IBM service partition physically resides between the C partition and the unallocated space on the rest of the 160GB drive, I can't expand it. At this point I think I need to talk to Paragon unless anyone else has an idea.

Ok, if you're having the same problem as me - select the option that allows you to copy the partitions proportionally.