Background: for Thinkpad laptop, there is hidden partition to restore
windows system installation when needed, which is only accessible by
original MBR written by IBM. Thus any third party system, such as
Suse, it should not overwrite MBR by Grub, otherwise no chance to
recover such hidden partition function to restore windows
installation.[/color]
That hidden partition is on all ThinkPads. Yes, it is a convenient way
to restore Windows but what do you do when your hard drive dies? A new
hard drive won’t have that hidden partition and that partition is not
the only way to restore Windows.
You should use the ThinkPad provided utilities to burn a set of
recovery DVDs or try to find a set of recovery media elsewhere. Both
options will allow you restore your Windows partition but they won’t
recreate the hidden partition.
If you take that hidden partition out of the equation, you have so many
more options open to you!
–
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below this post.
Thank you.[/QUOTE]
in case of disk dead, there is indeed another way to resotre windows together with hidden partition by CD provided by IBM, but it’s huge work of “engineering” job to renew the entire disk including all partitions and its systems, not only Windows. in fact there is no way provided by IBM(originally, now it is Lenovo) to restore only windows if something is wrong with IBM MBR.
Besides, as old generation laptop, CD-rom is less and less supported…even as external media at the step of install & boot system.
Besides, as old generation laptop, CD-rom is less and less
supported…even as external media at the step of install & boot
system.[/color]
This is very true. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad and I’m faced with the same
problem. In my case, the laptop does not have a CD/DVD drive.
I have a simple solution: I clone my internal drive to an external
drive using a disk caddy or even a USB thumb drive (if I have one that
is big enough). Should my internal drive die, I install a new one and
clone the external drive to the new internal one or even install the
cloned drive and repeat the original cloning.
The process is pretty simple:
Boot openSUSE Live from a CD or a USB thumb drive
dd if= of= bs=10M
Yes, it could take a while to complete but it takes a lot less effort
than trying to rebuild your internal drive using only Lenovo recovery
media and, considering the cost of a laptop hard drive, it is a very
inexpensive solution.
–
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below this post.
Thank you.
Besides, as old generation laptop, CD-rom is less and less
supported…even as external media at the step of install & boot
system.[/color]
This is very true. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad and I’m faced with the same
problem. In my case, the laptop does not have a CD/DVD drive.
I have a simple solution: I clone my internal drive to an external
drive using a disk caddy or even a USB thumb drive (if I have one that
is big enough). Should my internal drive die, I install a new one and
clone the external drive to the new internal one or even install the
cloned drive and repeat the original cloning.
The process is pretty simple:
Boot openSUSE Live from a CD or a USB thumb drive
dd if= of= bs=10M
Yes, it could take a while to complete but it takes a lot less effort
than trying to rebuild your internal drive using only Lenovo recovery
media and, considering the cost of a laptop hard drive, it is a very
inexpensive solution.
–
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below this post.
Thank you.[/QUOTE]
I understand the solution of clone of disk. While in my case, by now neither disk in my hand has hardware problem by now, but Windows system, I need to refresh it almost every 2 years because of divers problem of system failure.
Considering the frequence, the solution i am looking for is relying on easy retoring Windows only, seperately with SLE…