This is not a new issue at all. In this post I will write a bit about my own experiences with this and similar schemes.
I recently bought an IBM Thinkpad for a friend of mine, through a summer offering at work. When we unpacked the machine, I was surprised to see that no recovery CD was included. It's been common practice to include an image CD that will wipe the entire harddrive out instead of installation disks that takes you through the usual Windows install procedure but in this case no disks were included at all.
It turns out the recovery software is included in a protected area of the harddrive. Note that this is NOT a partition. It's a special area that has direct support in some of the later ATA specifications for harddrives. Basically, the BIOS can send the drive a special command which will make it act like a smaller disk through the usual ATA commands. Obviously there are still special ways to access the data however to the operating system, the drive will appear to be reduced in size and the hidden area will be inaccessible. In other words, users of fdisk and other partition tools shouldn't be able to affect this area.
This special area contains images of the pre-installed software but it also contains some other programs that can be used for diagnostics/configuration. It allows the user access to a "graphical" BIOS setup utility during bootup for example. There are also some space left for user backups using special IBM tools. The programs and recovery procedures are accessed by pressing a special button on the keyboard during boot-up.
A note included with the machine says you can order a recovery CD from IBM if you change hardrives or if the usual recovery procedure doesn't work.
In the BIOS setup utility there's an option to disable the secret area. This will allow the user to reclaim the space taken by the hidden area of the disk. There's no mention of how to re-establish this area once you have deleted it. Obviously this would require CD's with the recovery software. I don't know if that's what you can order from IBM ie if the recovery CDs mentioned will not only the visible portion of the drive but will also re-establish the hidden area. I'm a bit concerned about this because the note included with the machine said the CDs would restore the machine to a state that resembles the state of the shipped machines (IBM's italics). Note that this is a translation of the Danish note which was probably originally written in English (a so-called "retroversion"). In the Danish version the word in itallics is "ligner" which in this context is close to the English word "resembles".
My worry is that the reason for this choice of wording is that the features requiring the hidden area won't work. Does anyone here have experience with this?
What I don't like about this "feature" is that it takes up a lot of space. More than 6% of the drive space is reserved for the hidden area. In addition to this, there's a huge i386 directory on the C-drive, in the visible area of the disk, used to store drivers and optional Windows components the user might need later. The hidden area obviously contains these files as well, but since they are invisible to the operating system there has to be a seperate copy on the C-drive (in addition to the installed versions of the files). There is also a directory containing various optinal software not installed in the "shipped state". This data too is available in hidden area but again a duplicate is needed to be able to install on the fly. If the user installs the software there will now be 3 (!) versions of the program on the disk (where one will be removeable - the "i386" dir will not be removeable however).
I think it would be much better to include the original install disks for all software (perhaps modified so that they would only install on the machine they were shipped with). In this way only one version of the software would have to be on the HD, and the user could insert the shipped CD's when the disk failed or optional components were needed.
My first PC had a much better
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This is not a new issue at all. In this post I will write a bit about my own experiences with this and similar schemes. I recently bought an IBM Thinkpad for a friend of mine, through a summer offering at work. When we unpacked the machine, I was surprised to see that no recovery CD was included. It's been common practice to include an image CD that will wipe the entire harddrive out instead of installation disks that takes you through the usual Windows install procedure but in this case no disks were included at all. It turns out the recovery software is included in a protected area of the harddrive. Note that this is NOT a partition. It's a special area that has direct support in some of the later ATA specifications for harddrives. Basically, the BIOS can send the drive a special command which will make it act like a smaller disk through the usual ATA commands. Obviously there are still special ways to access the data however to the operating system, the drive will appear to be reduced in size and the hidden area will be inaccessible. In other words, users of fdisk and other partition tools shouldn't be able to affect this area. This special area contains images of the pre-installed software but it also contains some other programs that can be used for diagnostics/configuration. It allows the user access to a "graphical" BIOS setup utility during bootup for example. There are also some space left for user backups using special IBM tools. The programs and recovery procedures are accessed by pressing a special button on the keyboard during boot-up. A note included with the machine says you can order a recovery CD from IBM if you change hardrives or if the usual recovery procedure doesn't work. In the BIOS setup utility there's an option to disable the secret area. This will allow the user to reclaim the space taken by the hidden area of the disk. There's no mention of how to re-establish this area once you have deleted it. Obviously this would require CD's with the recovery software. I don't know if that's what you can order from IBM ie if the recovery CDs mentioned will not only the visible portion of the drive but will also re-establish the hidden area. I'm a bit concerned about this because the note included with the machine said the CDs would restore the machine to a state that resembles the state of the shipped machines (IBM's italics). Note that this is a translation of the Danish note which was probably originally written in English (a so-called "retroversion"). In the Danish version the word in itallics is "ligner" which in this context is close to the English word "resembles". My worry is that the reason for this choice of wording is that the features requiring the hidden area won't work. Does anyone here have experience with this? What I don't like about this "feature" is that it takes up a lot of space. More than 6% of the drive space is reserved for the hidden area. In addition to this, there's a huge i386 directory on the C-drive, in the visible area of the disk, used to store drivers and optional Windows components the user might need later. The hidden area obviously contains these files as well, but since they are invisible to the operating system there has to be a seperate copy on the C-drive (in addition to the installed versions of the files). There is also a directory containing various optinal software not installed in the "shipped state". This data too is available in hidden area but again a duplicate is needed to be able to install on the fly. If the user installs the software there will now be 3 (!) versions of the program on the disk (where one will be removeable - the "i386" dir will not be removeable however). I think it would be much better to include the original install disks for all software (perhaps modified so that they would only install on the machine they were shipped with). In this way only one version of the software would have to be on the HD, and the user could insert the shipped CD's when the disk failed or optional components were needed. My first PC had a much better