Cloning a ThinkPad Hard Disk Drive
There may not be a single solution to the ‘hang’ that ThinkPad owners get after seemingly
successfully cloning their hard disk drive (hdd). The main issue is the relationship between
the boot sector and the hidden IBM Predesktop Area. If you’re not upgrading the capacity of
your hdd then you may not need to clone every single sector as you probably will install a new
copy of Windows. However, if you are increasing capacity, you probably want to keep
everyting – especially as you have no Windows CD from IBM. If you’ve tried, but your system
hangs between the IBM splash screen and the Windows splash screen then this is for you.
Follows the procedure which I found works using:
• ThinkPad R40
• Norton Ghost / PQ Image Center, etc.
• Fujitsu 30 GB hdd (original with Windows pre-installed)
• Fujitsu 80 GB hdd
• USB laptop ATA case (£1 from eBay)
1. Hardware Config
This is all-important. Your new hdd should installed in the ThinkPad and your original hdd
should be attached through the USB device. Or you can is a bootable network disk to image to a network drive.
2. Ghost (or other)
The process will not work unless you use a boot disk for your cloning software.
3. IBM Predesktop Area
You must disable the IBM Predesktop Area from the BIOS. To do this press F1 on the IBM
splash screen on startup, go to Security | IBM Predesktop Area and Disable it. Ok the
warning message.
4. Booting from Ghost
You can either now re-boot and press F12 on the splash screen to use the CD to boot or you
can stay in the BIOS and re-order the bootable devices: Startup | Boot. Either way, choose
your USB drivers on the way in to your cloning software.
5. Choose type of clone
Go to the Image/Tape tab of the Options screen in Ghost. You have two choices: -ia and –ib.
Image All will copy your old disk to the new one, but partition any extra space on your new,
bigger drive. Image Boot won’t do this: it integrates the new space into. With PQ Image Center it will ask you when you start the process to resize.
6. Re-Boot
When the clone has finished, re-boot with the old hdd disconnected. If this works ok, log out
of Windows and set the bios back so that the IBM Predesktop Area is set to ‘Normal’.
I hope this article saves people a lot of time as well as headaches and frustration...
Article ID: 44, Created On: 2/23/2009, Modified: 11/1/2013