Rescue and Recovery, Hidden Partition Questions

Hi all, it's my first time posting! I'm currently away at school and I have a shiny new T400 waiting for me at home. When I get my hands on the Thinkpad, I'm planning on replacing the pre-installed Vista Basic with Ultimate. Is there any way to update the OS image that is stored on the hidden partition or somehow replacing the hidden partition with a later image? I'd like to retain the functionality of the blue Thinkvantage button after my upgrade (notably R&R), so I don't have to lug the recovery disks with me back to school. Thanks.

 

Bump for no responses.

 

Please observe the 24 hour bumping rule.

How much could the Recovery discs possibly weigh? I would assume it would work, but am generally against doing upgrades. They usually have complications, though I've never done it with Vista. I like to make the discs and then wipe it and do a clean install. Chances are there's going to be some of the ThinkVantage tools you don't want.

 

I don't think the OP was trying to upgrade the recovery partition.

Instead he was planning a clean install of Vista Ultimate. After getting it setup properly he would then want to image the computer with R&R and if possible replace the image on the Q partition with his custom image.

This should be possible in theory, however, I don't know how to achieve it.

In any case, you should make a DVD backup of the factory recovery partition (use the included Lenovo utility, 1 CD boot and 2 DVD image) as well as the SWTools, SWShare, and S drive before doing anything.

 

Jonlumpkin,
What is this "S" drive people are talking about? What is on it?

 

The S drive is the "Pre-Desktop Environment". It is used for using rescue and recovery (either on the system "Q" partition, recovery DVDs, or a network location [Ethernet required]). To access it, press the blue (ThinkVantage) button before Windows starts loading.

The S drive can also be used for various system restore tasks. If something happens to your MBR, it is the S drive/predesktop environment that will attempt to fix it. You are also able to back up files (e.g. important documents) using the predesktop environment. This can be useful before formatting/restoring your computer if you are unable to boot into Windows.

I removed the recovery image (Q drive, about 10GB), but kept the service partition (S, about 1.5GB) because it is a useful tool (especially because I don't have an optical drive to use something like Knoppix or SysRescueCD on my x200).