How to add an OEM Lenovo partion to a new hard drive but....

[dorronto]

I have a friend who is upgrading his hard drive and wants to install Windows 7 on it but wants to transfer his Win XP OEM partition from the old hard drive to the new one. His T61p came with XP.

He has since used and likes Windows 7. He wants the XP OEM partition on the hard drive for possible reselling purposes.

First, is this allowed legally? and if so how can it be done.
He has no Product Recovery Discs.

Thanks,
Ron

[ZaZ]

Why don't they hang onto the old drive, then worry about it later if they want to sell it? If you want to make a partition, you can use gparted.

[billp117]

To my knowledge...installing Windows 7 will blow out the XP hidden installation. Also, there is no reason to really keep Windows XP since Windows 7 is really very compatible with the T61p and superior in stability and reliability. If he has a Core-2-Duo processor he can run Windows 7 64 bit with 4 GB ram.

Another solution is to run a larger HD like a 500 GB drive and keep the old drive just in case. But that strategy almost never turns into reliality because Windows 7 has become a preferred OS. If he just has to have XP...then a new partition would work but is not really a solution for a mainstream user. Heck...why not have three partitions and install Ubuntu? Buyers like Windows 7.

Do your friend a favor and recommend blowing out Windows XP and installing Windows 7...and be happy.

[dorronto]

Well, he bought a 750GB hard drive for a reason. He needs more space..

So it seems it either can't be done or it's just not worth the hassle...

We'll see.........

Ron

[GomJabbar]

You can clone the old drive to the new drive, then install Windows 7 on the new drive. I believe the service partition (OEM Lenovo partition) will remain intact, but the MBR will not. You would have to restore the MBR with the Rescue and Recovery Repair diskette to reaccess the service partition (losing access to booting Windows 7 in the process). Alternatively, it is possible to boot the service partition using the GRUB bootloader. You will have to make some changes in the GRUB configuration file though.

I should say that I believe this would work, but I cannot say so definitively.