Disable and Remove ThinkPad Hidden Service Partition
IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad usually comes a protected hidden service partition that takes up about 5 GB of hard disk space. So you need not be surprise when you check your available hard drive space and found out that the size of hard disk is less than the size advertised.
ThinkPad service partition is a non-DOS partition Hidden Protected Area (HPA). This partition is used to store original system files necessary to restore the system to its out of the box (factory) condition. To know if your ThinkPad system has service partition, there are two ways to check:
- If your machine displays the message “Press F11 to invoke the Product Recovery Program” or “To start the product recovery program, press F11″ during system start-up, then your system has the service partition.
- If the instructions located in the User’s Guide concerning recovering preinstalled software state to recover your system by choosing F11 at boot-up, then your system came preconfigured with the service partition.
The trouble with service partition is that it takes out quite a bit of precious laptop/notebook hard disk space. Normally, ThinkPad users won’t be restore your system frequently, unless system crash occurs. So, service partition is one of the least used component that reside on the hard disk, and thus it can be stored at other medium, such as CD or DVD. Beside, the hard disk in a laptop has the highest possibility of crash or broken. When the hard disk spoilt, you can be sure that the service partition will not be able to use too. So it’s logical too to store the data in service partition as a product recovery CD.
After creating the ThinkPad recovery CD, or if you simply just don’t like the service partition space to be wasted idle, the next step is obviously to reclaim and recover the space that previously occupied by service partition.
Important: Once you remove the service partition, you will not be able to restore your ThinkPad notebook system to original state at it leaves factory, unless you have prepared or have the recovery CD.
The first step to remove ThinkPad service partition is to unhide and unprotect the service partition in the BIOS. ThinkPad BIOS will overwrite the HDD controller so that the disk will assume the space allocated to service partition doesn’t exist in order to safeguard the partition from accidental deletion. Press F1 or Access IBM at the beginning of the boot sequence when the ThinkPad boots up. In the BIOS setup menu, go to Security, and then set the IBM PreDesktop Area to Disabled.
Now you can use any partition manager such as fdisk, diskpart, BootIt NG or Partition Magic to manipulate the partition, either delete the partition and create a new partition on reclaimed space, or merge the service partition to existing partition. If you having trouble trying to delete the service partition, try to boot to DOS, or use a bootable partition manager.
Alternatively, if you have a non-IBM/Lenovo laptop or older IBM/Lenovo laptop that doesn’t HPA-aware, you can download Feature Tool from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The IBM’s (Hitachi’s) Drive Feature Tool can also remove the Hidden Protected Area service partition by changing the capacity of the hard disk.
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Entries (RSS)
June 21st, 2009 12:33
On my T61 there is no such command under the ‘Security’ menu in the BIOS. I suggest it is time to update your instructions. Thanks for contributing to the greater knowledge anyway. It seems to have helped other.
November 20th, 2008 18:38
Pessoal,
Tenho um Lenovo 3000 N200 e no momento estou satisfeito, porém o HD faz muito barulho, trabalha o tempo todo e quando ouço música pelo CD e tb faz muito barulho (turbina de avião).
Fora isso, ele é completo, o CARE da Lenovo muito bom.
November 7th, 2008 14:31
Thanks! I got blue screen of death after installing Xubuntu with WindowsXP. Your post help me disable the recovery partition and dual boot works fine now.
May 29th, 2008 23:51
[...] Maggio 29, 2008 di ilpinguinofurioso Un brevissimo post che spero a possa risultare utile a tutti coloro in procinto di installare una distribuzione Linux Ubuntu su in Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad x60. Ho appena installato da zero Ubuntu 8.04 e tutto sembra funzionare a meraviglia. Le periferiche hardware sono riconosciute immediatamente compresa scheda wireless e dual core. Per l’installazioni di versioni precedenti di Ubuntu consiglio di dare un’occhiata qui. Personalmente non ho testato né il bluetooth, né il sistema di riconoscimento delle impronte digitali semplicemente perché non utilizzo queste caretteristiche ma dal link già citato non sembrano esserci problemi di sorta. Se avete acquistato il portatile con Windows preinstallato (purtroppo per voi) vi consiglio come prima cosa di creare i ThinkPad recovery CDs (anche per questioni di supporto e garanzia). Se poi volete eliminare la partizione nascosta (che si trova nella maggior parte dei thinkpad) e guadagnare qualche Gb di spazio su hard disk, vi consiglio di dare un’occhiata a questo link. [...]
April 17th, 2008 02:24
Hi,
I have a ThinkPad R61, that came with Windows Vista pre-installed and the recorey CDs from Windows XP. Since it was running slowly with Vista, I used the recovery CDs to install Windows XP. Does the recovery CDs erases or overwrites the hidden partion that came from factory? I didn’t make the recovery CDs from Vista.
Thanks,
Felipe.
April 6th, 2008 20:19
hi, my ibm x61s don’t hav the meny you write about…
“In the BIOS setup menu, go to Security, and then set the IBM PreDesktop Area to Disabled”
can you give me another tips?
September 16th, 2007 01:40
[...] yeah. Here’s the other page that I [...]
February 3rd, 2007 19:43
I attempted to remove this hidden partition and performed a clean installation of XP Pro before I read your article here.. This seems to have worked OK as I have regained the 5 Gbtes of the hidden partition. However , on bootup , I still get the DOS-type Thinkpad screen which says “To interupt normal Bootup press the blue Thinkpad button” The laptop then boots normally into XP.
Is it possible to remove this screen at bootup ?
It would seem that I haven’t removed all the IBM installed software or this screen would not appear at bootup !
September 9th, 2006 14:46
[...] more details [...]