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There seems to be a great deal of confusion with regard to the partitioning
performed by the recovery programs for our Thinkpads.
Since at least the release of NT4 in 1998, IBM established a standard partition
format for their hard drives of C: of 2GB in FAT16 with the remainder of the
drive being D: in FAT32 for W98 preloads, or D: in FAT16 for NT preloads. This
appears to be the case with almost all systems manufactured after 1998 (e.g. the
240, all 390s, all 600s, 560Z, 770X and Z and many others).
The why of what made Big Blue decide to do this is easily inferred. The Thinkpad
is primarily a business laptop and most businesses were using NT4 for their
systems. As NT can't read drives formatted in FAT32, FAT16 was chosen as the
accepted standard for the initial drive partition.
So for many of us, even though we are running W98, we're forced to do so on a
FAT16 partition unless we choose to manually convert the partition to FAT32. I
want to tell you all to not give in to this urge to convert. Many have used
programs such as PartitionMagic to expand the C: partition to greater than 2GB
size in order to load their programs. This is another urge you should not give
in to.
Should you ever have to run the recovery utility for your system, the first
thing the utility will do is check the C: partition format and size. On some
systems, the utility will fail if a 2GB FAT16 partition is not found,
(see: http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/LWIK-3TSPLM.html )
on some others, the utility will FORMAT your HD and restore the factory configuration as the only possible
means to run the recovery. This will force you to re-install all of your software, not to mention having to attempt to recover your personal files, if
you had installed them to C:.
However, the recovery utility is not completely stupid. You can selectively
choose to run the utility as you are offered choices during the process, to wit:
1) Do Not Continue with Recovery, Exit to DOS.
2) Use Existing Partitioning and Format C: Drive Only
3) Factory Default Partitioning and Format All Drives
Selecting number 2 will result in NO formatting or partitioning being performed
on the HD other than in the C: partition PROVIDED THE C: PARTITION IS 2GB IN FAT
16! If this is not the case, the recovery will fail and you'll be forced to
choose number 3. A little forethought in setting up your partitions and installing your programs will make the recovery process absolutely painless.
First and foremost, leave the 2GB FAT16 C: partition alone! FDISK or use PartitionMagic to set the freespace on the drive to at least 2 partitions, 3 if
possible, in FAT32. This will give you separate drives for all of your additional programs and files which will be completely untouched should you ever
have to run the recovery utility in the future.
I'm presently setting up my new 600E with W98SE on C: in FAT16, W2K on D: in
FAT32, all of my programs (Office2K, Acrobat, Photoshop, etc.) on E: in FAT32
and all of my personal files and DOCs on F: in FAT32.
As I'm dual booting W98 and W2K, the boot manager resides on C: and is overwritten should I have need to run the recovery utility. But, as I am able to
selectively format and install to the C: drive, none of my other drives
are affected and everything is intact.
Restoring the W2K boot manager in the event of having to run the recovery utility is as easy as booting from your W2K CD (the CD should be the FIRST boot
device in EZSetup by default!), run setup and select Repair when offered the
choice. W2K will find the previous installation on D:, as well as the W98 install, and ask you if you want to have a dual boot system. Select yes and the
boot manager will be restored to the C: drive. This will also work with WinME if
I remember correctly from my playing with the Betas.
The same applies to those using PowerQuest's BootMagic to dual boot their systems. Simply re-run the application after a recovery and you'll restore
the boot manager.
For those who ask "why should I keep W98 or NT4 on my C: drive, I never use
it?", think of it as a 2GB recovery utility that resides on your HD.
Regards,
James H. E. Maugham
CaptJHEM@waterw.com
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