First let’s talk about preparation you have to do:
Software: IBM X31 /T40 system recovery CD
Hardware: X31 /A31 TP laptop, and HPA hard disk (installed in TP(ThinkPad))
Note: X31 CD-ROM boot up with no base.
Before official operation, you’d first prepare recovery hard disk, generally there’re three situations:
1. Hard disk without partitions. For this situation, it’s quite easy, just directly follow the next recovery steps;
2. Hard disk with partitions but no HPA, please first remove the partitions.
3. Hard disk with HPA partitions. And this situation is a kind of complex, please first check the article below.
These few series laptops use new recovery mechanism, called AccessIBM, which is also named “HPA(Hidden Protected Area)”. This is the space, about 3GB size, left at the last part of the hard disk for storing recovery system. When machine starts, press AccessIBM key to recover. New HPA recovery mechanism is much safer and faster. If you want to delete the area and use the space occupied, the occupied space would be of no partitions, and you could sue PQ or other partitioning tools to delete it. And after deleting the space, when machine starts, you could not press AccessIBM key to recover system and make relative setup. But you could directly press F1 to enter BISO setup, or press F12 to enter boot device choice.
After deleting it, make the entire disk one big partition, and then delete it again. This is to cover all partition information of original PHA! At last, you must remember to set the Predesktop Are