Hello to all.

I recently posted a question in the newbie forum, but I now have a much more specific one that I thought I should ask here.

I recently received an IBM T41 laptop in the mail which I intend to get up and running with Linux. Unfortunately, I just discovered a slight hardware problem, so I might end up shipping this one back and getting another, but this question still applies for the next time I try to do this.

My question is about the unmarked area at the end of a hard drive that XP keeps for recovery purposes. I've already ordered the recovery cd and I understand that I no longer need this area, but I'm still a little confused how to deal with it. My plan was to shrink XP down to 7 or 8 gigs and partition the rest for Linux. I booted up into the Slack install CD before XP had a change to convert everything to NTFS, and used parted to shrink the partition. That part all worked fine, but when I booted back up and pressed the "Access IBM" key to get into BIOS (that's how IBM does it apparently), I got an error that something couldn't be found, and it still gets me into BIOS with a little effort but I obviously messed something up. Also, now that I think about it, using parted to shrink the partition probably just took that "secret area" of recovery data and pushed it into the rest when it resized the partition, rather than getting rid of it altogether as I'd wanted.

If I could start over and do this again (which it looks like I'm going to be doing), how can I delete that data and then shrink XP itself down? Running a 'print' on parted shows that the entire drive is one vfat partition, and doesn't even show it as being free space (parted would show free space that wasn't assigned to a partion when using print, wouldn't it?). Would I have to split the partition in the middle, format the top part, put them back together, and then shrink it? It seems like that's a lot of work just to accomplish this... what is the right way of doing it?

Also, how would I work with this if I wanted to keep that recovery section? It looks like IBM's little handy BIOS tools use it somehow, so maybe I can sacrifice 3 gigs or so (for now) and keep it there. Still, since it's not shown as being separate from the rest of the drive, I have no idea how I'd go about splitting it off so I don't touch it and then shrinking XP down so I can go about partitioning the remaining space.

If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know. I'm pretty annoyed at Microsoft at the moment, but so many people dual-boot XP and Linux that it can't be impossible to accomplish this...

-Johnathan

As if everything wasn't confusing enough, get this...

As I said before, that parted work made it so IBM wouldn't go into its little special BIOS (it says "Authentication of system services failed"). However, after turning off the computer and turning it back on later, the entire BIOS was there and available. In addition, I went into the recovery section (that uses that "hidden area" to restore the drive), and it successfully restored Windows, even after I'd pushed the whole partition down to 8 gigs. I have no idea how that process works, but I guess Microsoft gets a little bit of credit for still finding that hidden area even after it was moved.

I'm even more confused now, but my original question still remains... what is the best way to leave that hidden area alone, shrink XP's partition, and then deal with Linux on the remainder. Also, if anyone has any particular experience with the IBMs, is it possible to delete that restore area and still get into BIOS?

Thanks again,
Johnathan

Ok, I'll take back that credit I give to Microsoft and take some more away. I just got off the phone with an IBM tech support person who basically said they were instructed not to discuss the hidden partition with anyone because they didn't want it getting deleted because then IBM's special diagnostic tools would be gone and they'd have customers screaming at them. I love the way that works...

Anyway, the person told me that the partition was completely hidden and no partitioning software could find it and remove it (short of formatting the entire drive). He then proceeded to tell me that I shouldn't fill up the drive that much anyway and there's no need to care about that extra 3 gigs and I should think about extra storage by the time I get that close to filling up the drive anyway. Hmm... ok, but I'm still wondering how they "hide" that partition. They refused to give me any information about it, but is this possible? Can a manufacturer make a hard drive with a partition that parted, fdisk, etc. doesn't even see and can't change at all? I don't want to deal with this and I'm fine with leaving their little partition alone, but I want to know how to go about setting up these partitions.

When I went in before and used parted to shrink the vfat partition to 8 gigs, the system wouldn't start at all (disk failure... something like that), but when I restored windows using their little special hidden area, it worked fine. How can I get XP on a smaller partition so I can install Linux, or is that just outright impossible to do? I'm sure people have done this before (with IBM machines). Any advice?

-Johnathan

Well I will give you credit for persistence! However, the guys at IBM are right in saying this is something better for the average user to leave alone.
There is a way to disable the hidden properties of the recovery partition. It is done in the bios under the security section. I can't remember exactly where, so you could google for that info.

A couple of options which you have ...

1. Ask them to set up the disk the way you want it on the one which you ordered.

2. Run scan disk then run a utility like Partition Magic.

3. Run scan disk then boot up with systemrescue cd and run the NTFS resize utility. Run a check first to see what you can expect to accomplish with the command: ntfsresize --info /dev/hda

4. Disable the recovery stuff in the bios and delete everything from the drive. Then you can install Linux and heck with MS. ( you will need the recovery cdroms to get MS back )

5. You could make an image of the ms partition using ghost or partimage which is a lot faster to restore than using the recovery partition or even the recovery cdroms.

Thanks for the info. I've thought about it and I'd better just leave that area alone. I did just go in and see that section in BIOS, and, although I still don't see how a BIOS setting can completely lock the partition table, I see now how it works.

As far as my options go, I'll start looking into things like ntfsresize perhaps if that's the only way to do it, but I still think what I'm doing should work... why doesn't it?

I boot up the clean system without touching anything and go directly into Slack's bootable CD. I resize the vfat partition (which XP hasn't converted to NTFS) to 8000 mb, and confirm that this change has taken effect. I then restart, and try to go into BIOS. I get an error that it can't start IBM's special BIOS screen, and I go into a text BIOS. I change the boot order so we're starting from the hard drive, not the CD rom, and restart. This time, I can get into IBM's special BIOS. I exit out and let the computer start up, booting to the hard drive now, but I get "Invalid system disk / Replace the disk, and then press any key."

Why do I get this system disk message and why won't XP boot after the vfat has been resized? Why will IBM's BIOS not work after I partition if I'm set to boot to a CD, but it will if I boot to the hard drive?

-Johnathan

I haven't tried to do the vfat-resize-before-ms-converts-to-ntfs method. I'm not sure about what is or isn't working there.
Here's another option...

6. Tell the people at IBM since they aren't going to help you, you want a refund so you can buy a linux friendly computer.

It's not necessarily that this particular laptop isn't Linux-friendly... actually the research I've been doing shows that it relatively is. I'm more apt to blame Microsoft for doing weird things with XP at this point. Still, I like this particular system and I want to keep it, but I know there is a way to shrink XP partitions... there must be hundreds of people that have done this one way or another, but it just doesn't seem to work for me.

Hmm...

I think the problem is you are trying to shrink it toooo much. Run the command: ntfsresize --info /dev/hda to see what size you can safely expect to reduce xp down to.

I don't have ntfsresize although that's my next plan if I can't get this vfat thing to work. I don't have Office on this system and I've heard XP takes a little under 2 gigs, so I'm sure 8 is fine.

-Johnathan

I know 8gigs is plenty but if you have a 40 gig hard drive which xp used entirely, then xp has a wonderful habit of putting information way out there so it can't be moved ( not entirely by accident, me thinks ). Anywho, because of that, you need to do a dry run of ntfs to find out what your limits are.
A lot of live cd distros have ntfs resize on them. Like system rescue cd or knoppix....

Yeah, I plan to download the ISO for the cd that ntfsresize links to on its page, but I'm on dialup now and 100 mbs is a bit much .

I suppose that could be the problem, but parted says it can shuffle data around without the need to partition anything. I'd really like to avoid resizing it after it becomes NTFS (since I've heard more problems related to doing that than the vfat resize), but it looks like it might be worth a shot. I'd just like to know why this vfat resize with parted isn't working, since it seems it should. If XP spreads data around across the drive before any programs are installed, before NTFS is set up, before it's even turned on and configured for the first time, so much so that parted can't push it together, then I don't know what to say.

-Johnathan