IBM ThinkPad HDD Upgrade

Recently I decided to upgrade the original 40GB hard drive in my ThinkPad T41 to something bigger (and faster). HDD upgrade is not something I like. It is as complicated, as changing the old laptop for a new one, but in the end you still have your old laptop, so the reward is... not that rewarding. Why is it so difficult and time consuming? I work with my computer easily ten hours a day (on average). And everyday I do something that makes it better. Add a few links, store a password or two, customize several websites, or install an application that makes my life easier. So imagine after, say 500 days, I decide to change the drive. I can always use a tool like Norton Ghost, to mirror my old drive (stream the content to the new one), but at the same time, I do realize my 500 days old Windows operating system is cluttered with the remains of old applications, unused registry settings and lots of rubbish that I no longer use, but what occupies the precious RAM and causes instabilities. Windows does require periodical refresh (that means fresh install most of the times). So usually when I decide to upgrade the hard drive, it is a good time to clean-install a fresh copy of the operating system. But then it takes almost a month to bring everything back to where it used to be... Metadata metachallenges... One day this will be universally solved.

But as this blog is not about life - changing ideas, I will not discuss the general (poor) state of the metadata solutions. The purpose of this bulletin is to share the way I upgraded a drive in my IBM Thinkpad T41 (should generally apply to other IBM laptops).

Where was the challenge? I had no Windows installation CD. IBM laptops come with Windows preinstalled, so you can restore the computer to factory default state (that means reformatting the hard drive) by pressing the "Access IBM" button at startup and then choosing the "Recover to factory settings" option. Of course... but this works ONLY when your hard drive has something they call "Predesktop Area", a piece of a drive with Windows install files on it. As you can imagine, the new aftermarket drives simply don't have that special area...

My plan was generally simple:

1. Transfer the IBM predesktop area from the old drive to the new one
2. Use the Access IBM button at startup to rebuild original Windows from the new drive.

Unfortunately it did not work. I purchased the latest Norton Ghost, then using IDE-TO-USB converter cable plugged the new drive to the laptop, and used the "duplicate drive" option of Ghost to mirror the old drive to the new one. After that, I removed the old drive from the laptop and installed the new one, booted the laptop and pressed the Blue button... just to learn Ghost failed to mirror the drive properly. I don't know exactly what happened, but the Blue button was not giving the usual options, throwing an error message instead. I tried several other drive mirroring tools and none worked (it took several days, installing the mirroring soft, executing the mirror operation and learning it failed). Then I realized I would not do it with "normal" tools. IBM Predesktop is simply not visible to them the way it should be.

So I started digging The Net and here is what I learned:

• The predesktop area is not a legal partition. Most (if not all) of the mirroring software just can't see it.
• When you get to the "Recover to factory..." option via the blue "Access IBM" button at startup, there is a hidden exit by pressing F3. It brings you to the command shell (DOS). Once there, you may use fwbackup.exe and fwrestor.exe applications you will find there. Fwbackup backs up the predesktop area somewhere, and fwrestore does the opposite.

So now my new HDD upgrade plan was modified to look like this:

1. Prepare a IDE-TO-USB converter.
2. Prepare a THIRD (intermediate) HDD (6GB is enough, I used an old drive from some old Toshiba laptop, but generally you can use any USB drive for that (as long as it can be formatted with FAT32).
3. Prepare a bootable Windows 95 or Windows 98 CD (again from one of my old machines).
4. Boot Windows normally from the old drive, then connect the intermediate drive over USB and format it using FAT32 filesystem. The choice of FAT32 is because the drive has to be visible after the machine is booted with DOS shell of Win 95/98.
5. Reboot and press the blue "Access IBM" button, then go to "Recover to factory..." and press F3 (undocumented) to exit to the DOS command shell.
6. Make sure the intermediate drive is visible (it mounted as drive D: in my case). Go to A:\RECOVERY (A: is a virtual drive mounted during the IBM recovery procedure) and launch FWBACKUP application:
   fwbackup size=640 file=d:\backup
   This will take fairly long time (2 hours+ in my case), and will produce a set of backup.nnn files on the intermediate drive.
7. Copy the FWRESTOR.EXE from A: to the intermediate drive (you will need this application to restore the backup.nnn files created in step 6).
8. Power off the machine, replace the old hard drive with a new, blank one. Leave the intermediate drive with backup files connected over USB.
9. Boot the computer with the Windows 9x CD (actually do not start Windows, just go to the DOS shell). From there go to the intermediate drive (still conencted over USB) and run:
   fwrestor file=d:\backup
   This will restore the predesktop area to the new drive. We are almost home...
10. Reboot, press the blue "Access IBM" and go to the "Recover to factory...". This will setup you a fresh copy of Windows XP, direct from the predesktop area, just transferred over the intermediate drive from your old to the new one. Ufffff......

The nice thing about this rather lenghty procedure is you will recover everything exactly as it was intended to by IBM. Now it is just a matter of updating your Windows to the latest patches (another 3-5 hours), install the applications (1-3 days) and copy over all your passwords and cookies (2 weeks...). Now you know why I hate this process, just hoping the description above will save you some work and time.

Till next time...