Hardware: So IBM Thinkpads come with a predesktop area — a hidden 4GB partition of recovery files, Windows XP install disks, windows drivers, etc. taking up space on the hard disk.
I haven’t used Windows much at all on this machine, given that I don’t use Windows when I can avoid it, but I did pay several hundred dollars for it — since it’s now impossible once again to buy an IBM laptop without doing so (or without paying quite a lot extra). So I want to keep it around, and I want to make sure I can reinstall if things go wrong.
Having a hidden partition just isn’t quite safe enough for me — because I’ve had hard disks go belly-up before, or scribble on the partition table, or so on — these things happen. Thankfully it’s easy enough to get CD-ROMs shipped from IBM support if you ask nicely, so I did so yesterday afternoon at about 3pm.
This morning at 9am, there was a knock at the door, and I received a package shipped from Durham, NC containing the reinstall CDs.
It’s great dealing with professional hardware companies again ;)