Rescue and Recovery - ThinkWiki

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Rescue and Recovery

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From ThinkWiki Rescue and Recovery version 3.0 consists of a bootable partition containing various system recovery tools, including full recovery of the preinstalled Windows XP partition. It can be activated by pressing the ThinkPad , Access IBM or ThinkVantage Button during system boot. It contains a FAT filesystem (sometimes labeled "IBM_SERVICE", "SERVICEV001", etc.), and has partition type 0x12 ("Compaq diagnostics" in fdisk). As opposed to a Hidden Protected Area Recovery partitions are ordinary partitions, accessible through the partition table. As they are ordinary partitions they are accessible by ordinary partitioning tools. They should be dealt with carefully. Rescue and Recovery is a Windows-specific feature. If you intend to recover into Windows when you have an issue, it is important to follow the warnings here carefully. If you intend to run another operating system exclusively and never return to Windows, removing this partition is safe. If you remove it, you can still reinstall windows at a later time, provided you have created a Recovery set of discs (1CD + 1DVD or 5CDs required). Booting from the Recovery CD will restore the system to the factory state including the recovery partition.

Contents
1 Proper MBR 1.1 MBR written by GRUB 1.2 GRUB in a partition's boot sector 1.3 Using Product Recovery to Restore the Windows MBR 1.4 Using the Windows Bootloader to Boot Linux (this method doesn't work with Windows 7) 2 Newer versions of Rescue and Recovery 3 Older versions of Rescue and Recovery 4 Recovery Boot Hangs 5 Recovery from hard drive 6 External links 7 Models featuring this technology

Proper MBR
ATTENTION ! Only tinker with the MBR and the Rescue and Recovery partition if you know what you're doing. Mistakes can leave the system unbootable and can make it very difficult to retrieve the data on the harddisk. Consideration 6 of the Readme states: "The Master Boot Record (MBR) must be configured properly for the Rescue and Recovery application to function properly. When possible, the Rescue and Recovery application attempts to ensure the proper configuration of the MBR. This can only occur if the Rescue and Recovery application is installed after other applications that requires the MBR." Apparently, the MBR is not "configured properly" if LILO or GRUB have written it. The following is the case: The default bootloader seems to ignore the active bit and always boots the first partition instead The default bootloader contains code to catch a press of the appropriate button during bootup and launch the Rescue and Recovery application in that case Before launching the Rescue and Recovery application at system boot, the default bootloader changes the partition type of the Rescue and Recovery partiton to 0x0b, otherwise it changes it to 0x12 (to hide it from Windows) The Rescue and Recovery application assumes that the first partition contains Windows http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_and_Recovery 7/10/2012 2:45:34 PM