Solved: HDD swap and preserving OKR

[mister2]

I'm looking at swapping my HD to a Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT Hard Drive. I'm going to use the CMS Products Data Transfer USB 2.0 Kit - DTK-25U2 to do the copy. Does the CMS software do what it says and make a clone. The question is. Will my new HD have a hidden partition so I retain the use and function of the OKR? It seems that I read somewhere that when you do a HD swap you lose OKR.
Thanks, Dave

[scottyinco]

I believe to date, nobody has been able to clone their factory drive to a new drive and still have OKR work. If you get it to work, please report back here, as we'd all be interested.

Also, please don't post the same message to more than 1 forum. I deleted your other post.

[72guy]

Thanks scotty. Wasn't sure in which forum to post
By the way. How did you do your HD swap? I take it you didn't keep OKR?

[dwogs]

Has anybody talked to Lenovo directly about upgrading hard drives and keeping OKR? It seems crazy that you can't perform a very basic upgrade on a Lenovo PC without losing functionality.

Supposedly this person replaced their hard drive and their OKR button works. Has anyone checked this out?
http://www.hmarc.com/S-10/

Thanks.

[jaqiefox]

check the official lenovo forums. their official position seems to be that it is a free feature put on the systems from factory that they are unwilling to give any information or files to allow people to replicate OKR to a second drive or to the original should the partition table be wiped.

[dwogs]

I am really confused on this topic. It appears somebody did get OKR working after a HD upgrade in December, but nobody can replicate that success?

It also seems like a terrible response from Lenovo. It is hard to believe they will not support their hard wired feature during the second most common computer upgrade on a machine that is touted as one the easiest to upgrade. Pretty disappointing.

[MalibuJack]

I had success when I did a 1:1 partition copy to my new SSD.. It worked and I was able to do an OKR from power off that first time. As soon as I had altered the partitions the OKR stopped working, even though the partition type stayed the same, there's obviously something more that the OKR bootstrap is doing (perhaps a specific partition location or entry point hard-coded somewhere)

I did figure out that you can deinstall the OKR software and trap that key to do other things with it in XP though. I am hoping that I can figure out what exactly its doing so I can use the OKR key to boot a different partition with a different O/S (perhaps linux or some other alternate)

[72guy]

I had success when I did a 1:1 partition copy to my new SSD.. It worked and I was able to do an OKR from power off that first time. As soon as I had altered the partitions the OKR stopped working, even though the partition type stayed the same, there's obviously something more that the OKR bootstrap is doing (perhaps a specific partition location or entry point hard-coded somewhere)

I did figure out that you can deinstall the OKR software and trap that key to do other things with it in XP though. I am hoping that I can figure out what exactly its doing so I can use the OKR key to boot a different partition with a different O/S (perhaps linux or some other alternate)

MalibuJack,
Have you seen this thread. It seems to address the issue of altering partitions and retaining OKR. By the way. The Buffalo DVD works great. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the heads up.
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ad.id=4467

[MalibuJack]

I had success when I did a 1:1 partition copy to my new SSD.. It worked and I was able to do an OKR from power off that first time. As soon as I had altered the partitions the OKR stopped working, even though the partition type stayed the same, there's obviously something more that the OKR bootstrap is doing (perhaps a specific partition location or entry point hard-coded somewhere)

I did figure out that you can deinstall the OKR software and trap that key to do other things with it in XP though. I am hoping that I can figure out what exactly its doing so I can use the OKR key to boot a different partition with a different O/S (perhaps linux or some other alternate)

MalibuJack,
Have you seen this thread. It seems to address the issue of altering partitions and retaining OKR. By the way. The Buffalo DVD works great. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the heads up.
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ad.id=4467

yeah I found that link awhile back and posted it here. It was already too late for me to try to fix it or work with it by the time I had found it.

[dwogs]

It appears this thread only applies to changing the partitions and keeping OKR functional. I wonder if anybody has tried these same steps during a hard drive upgrade? That thread also has not had much recent activity and nobody really posts that it works at the end. OKR sounds good in theory, but I am starting not to care because it really does not help you if your hard drive crashes or you upgrade your hard drive. I guess I will upgrade my hard drive and stick with good old backup discs.