The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Cloning hard drive + recovery partition to upgraded drive?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by Sean S, May 1, 2009.

  1. Sean S

    Sean S Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    33
    Messages:
    181
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I have an X61 Tablet with the 160gb hard drive. I've just received a 320gb hard drive to replace it, however I want to completely duplicate the OS from one drive to another. Additionally, I want to copy the recovery partition over as well, so when I hit the thinkvantage button all of the recovery utilities are present.

    Is there any way to basically copy one hard drive, partition by partition and byte by byte, to a new one? The X61 doesn't have an optical drive so a USB solution would be ideal (I have SATA to USB docks), but if necessary I can rig a USB CD/DVD burner.

    thanks
    Sean
     
    Sean S, May 1, 2009
    #1
  2. zillal

    zillal Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    147
    Messages:
    169
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    If you want to keep the Thinkvantage button you need to use the Lenovo reset to factory settings procedure, see here.

    That doesn't mean you can't make an image copy of your C drive, see here.
     
    zillal, May 2, 2009
    #2
  3. hngu7721

    hngu7721 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    9
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I just completed the swap a few days ago using INDREK's suggestion:

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=376802

    I used ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 12 and was able to copy everything over without a hitch (THINKVANTAGE function intact)

    I did however had to go in and expand the PARTITION after the clone procedure. Nothing difficult whatsoever
     
    hngu7721, May 2, 2009
    #3
  4. zillal

    zillal Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    147
    Messages:
    169
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    It's holding down Thinkvantage or F11 during boot to enter Rescue and Recovery service partition that won't work after cloning with ATI. RnR uses track 0 following the Master Boot Record, and ATI will copy MBR and partitions but not track 0.

    (On my T500 holding down Thinkvantage during boot just gets me a Bios kind menu. But F11 works to enter RnR service partition so I never investigated.)
     
    zillal, May 2, 2009
    #4
  5. elvair

    elvair Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    12
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    If you create recovery disks and then use them on new disk they will create, main partion as well as recovery partion.
     
    elvair, May 3, 2009
    #5