[ale] thinkpad recovery

[Ken Cochran]

My T-41 (from about 2003-ish) recovery from the "access IBM"
function only wipes & restores the C: drive.  I have long had
the machine partitioned into a few logical drives (Windows
only - no Linux just yet I guess...) and it only redid the C:
drive & left the others alone.  Same for the factory restore CDs
(which I always order), with the "twist" that if you un-hide &
delete the recovery partition (via the BIOS) you can re-create
the *recovery* partition from the CDs as well.  (I think *that*
would clobber the entire drive though.)

I always used Partition Magic & I found it interesting that
the recovery partition never showed up (even as empty space)
on any allocation displays, etc.  Best I could tell, the only
indication that I had a recovery partition was the hdd being a
couple of gb smaller than it "should" be (yes, even counting
the base 10 v base 2 marketroid weasel-word definitions of
what a gigabyte is...).

-kc

>From: "Ron Mellema" <rmellema at exithere.com>
>To: <ale at ale.org>
>Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:12:49 -0500
>Subject: Re: [ale] thinkpad recovery
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
>Christopher Fowler
>Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 11:27 PM
>To: ale at ale.org
>Subject: Re: [ale] thinkpad recovery
>
>Ron Mellema wrote:
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Geoffrey
>>> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 7:40 PM
>>> To: ale at ale.org
>>> Subject: Re: [ale] thinkpad recovery
>>>
>>>
>>>> Jim Popovitch wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 19:04, Geoffrey <lists at serioustechnology.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> Hints would be greatly accepted...
>>>>>>
>>>>> Is it possible that your current R&R disk is outdated?   I would
>>>>> suspect that the original T60 R&R disk would pre-date security
>>>>> "enhancements" in SP2 and SP3.
>>>>>
>>>> I created the disk from the current environment.  It is running XP and
>>>> will only boot if you boot to safe mode.  I booted to safe mode and
>>>> created the rescue disk.
>>>>
>>>> All I want to do is reload this thing from scratch.
>>>
>>> On all IBM/Lenovo laptops there is a R&R partition, D: drive, that you can
>>> use to perform the recovery. To boot from this partition at the initial bios
>>> screen push the blue button on the keyboard that says "Access IBM"? It will
>>> load a screen that offers many options but one of them is restore factory
>>> files. I don't remember exactly the wording but if you follow the obvious
>>> and say I do not want to save any files it will result in a complete factory
>>> re-install. It will wipe the HD.
>>>
>>
>>How does that work?  Does this tell the BIOS to boot the second Windows
>>partition on disk?
>>Or does this work only with the Windows boot loader?
>
>Yes the blue button tells the BIOS to boot from the second partition.
>This should work as long as someone did not format the drive and edit the
>partition table.
>C: drive does not have to work as long as the D: partition is intact.
>Ron Mellema