Has anyone beaten the recovery partition issue?

aus9 · 09-01-2008, 12:32 AM

Hi

Some laptops, eg Asus and HP have a recovery partition.

I do not own one myself.

Some people have reported both dual boot issues and attempting to install linux only issues.

And common theme is certain laptops have a recovery partition.
Another common theme, but may relate to popularity is xp and vista.

Separate theme is Vista appears to have a different bootloader to xp for dual boot issues.

Maybe, bios or DRM devices may be involved.

My puny search has failed so far to find a reliable way of defeating this recovery partition.

Questions
1) Can anyone post a link to how to defeat it?

2) Was this defeat only related to dual booting or does the link show how to get rid of MS completely?

3) I have seen a suggestion to remove laptop hard drive and format it...wipe mbr etc outside the box on
another computer.

Has anyone actually done this with what results?

Feel free to add further questions or comments.

Altho I am a grub person, I suspect it is independent of lilo or grub.

Thanks for your time and any feedback

cheerio

--------

AFAIK this recovery partition is coupled to the bootloader. If system detects a change in say mbr
on reboot....the recovery partition overwrites the mbr.

AFAIK dual booters have reported that attempt to delete everything and start again...with linux with vista
have not been successful.

brianL · 09-01-2008, 05:14 AM

I've just bought an ASuS X50RL laptop (slightly used, ex-display), with XP Pro installed. It has a second partition (D:\), labelled "Do Not Delete" with backups for drivers,etc. But since it also came with a CD-ROM for those drivers, I may take a chance and delete it. Then resize the XP and install a few distros.

pinniped · 09-01-2008, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianL

It has a second partition (D:\), labelled "Do Not Delete" with backups for drivers,etc. But since it also came with a CD-ROM for those drivers, I may take a chance and delete it.

It might be better if:
1. You copy the MBR using dd
2. You copy the 'D:' partition using dd

That way, you know you can restore the HD as it was (well, minus the XP partition).

jschiwal · 09-01-2008, 06:08 AM

You asked about Vista vs XP mbr. One difference is that there isn't a C:\BOOT.INI file. However if you create one, Vista will use it. Some people prefer to use the Windows boot loader to chainload Linux. You can do the same with Vista, but you need to create a BOOT.INI file yourself.

brianL · 09-01-2008, 06:15 AM

I don't think the D:\ partition was installed by ASuS, but by the shop where I bought it, so I'm inclined to believe it's not really essential. I got rid of XP on my desktop about a month ago (no regrets), but I think I'll keep it on the laptop. It's a 160 GB HDD, so there's plenty of room for XP to co-exist with a few distros (Slackware (of course!), Debian testing, and tryouts of many more). It will keep me out of mischief for a while.

Touchpad has taken a bit of getting used to.

brianL · 09-01-2008, 08:47 AM

Checked on the contents of the 3 CD-ROMS that came with the laptop, and there's nothing on the D:\ partition that isn't on them. So I should be OK deleting it. Just out of curiosity, I've installed Ubuntu 8.04 via Wubi on my XP Pro, works perfectly, can't tell any difference between it and a "real" installation.

aus9 · 09-01-2008, 09:03 AM

brianL

I am not sure, but I think the recovery partition I am asking about is supposed to be hidden from ms users.

but feel free to correct me

brianL · 09-01-2008, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

brianL

I am not sure, but I think the recovery partition I am asking about is supposed to be hidden from ms users.

but feel free to correct me

Mmm, could be. I'll have to find out with Knoppix.

2damncommon · 09-01-2008, 09:41 AM

aus9, your question is a jumble.
You start out talking about recovery partitions, BIOS issues, and dual boot issues, but then ask how to "defeat it".
First you must know which issues you are dealing with on a particular computer and what you wish to do with it. Simply asking how to "defeat it" when "it" is any combination of issues is going to remain confusing.

My Dell laptop had 3 partitions; Dell Service Partition, Windows XP, Recovery Partition. No issue with my BIOS as far as I knew/know. I ran and saved "cfdisk -Ps" to note the original partition setup. Since the recovery partition was about 3GB and the laptop only has a CD burner I copied the service and recovery partitions to another computer over the network then burned them to DVD. I left the small service partition, resized the Windows partition and created partitions for Linux.

aus9 · 09-01-2008, 10:05 AM

2damncommon

thankyou for your reply.

Optional task
Since you are experienced with your laptop, humour me and wipe your mbr, and do a clean install of linux only.
If you have the laptop recovery partition that has caused others some grief, and you can reboot successfully I shall be grateful.

1) Could you confirm that your recovery partition was hidden from the ms os pls?

2) What do you mean by small service partiton please?

cheerio

2damncommon · 09-01-2008, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

Since you are experienced with your laptop, humour me and wipe your mbr, and do a clean install of linux only.

LOL. Nope. XP stays along with a recently installed Ubuntu 8.04.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

If you have the laptop recovery partition that has caused others some grief, and you can reboot successfully I shall be grateful.

I saved my recovery partition in an overabundance of caution in case I could not install Linux and screwed up the Windows install. I have never needed it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

1) Could you confirm that your recovery partition was hidden from the ms os pls?

I don't recall if it was visible in My Computer. I doubt it was hidden from fdisk or the Windows GUI partition tool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

2) What do you mean by small service partiton please?

I thought I might be using the wrong term for this. Dell Utility Partition seems to be correct. There is a link to info about the recovery partition at the bottom of that page.

brianL · 09-01-2008, 11:01 AM

No hidden partitions on mine. Deleted D:\, and resized C:\ to 40 GB successfully. Next exciting episode: will brianL get Slackware 12.1 installed? Wait and see!!

aus9 · 09-01-2008, 07:27 PM

2damncommon

Thankyou for that link....IMHO you have a recovery partition. I am of course, not sure if it works the same as the asus, acer or hp lappies but that exe file does look like it may be the culprit.

I do note your mention of the second link excludes vista....and some of the issues have been reported by vista users.
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm

Now all I need is someone to do a clean install and prove the other posters wrong.

to Anyone
If you do a search (even just in laptops) of keyword recovery you will see a number of hits. This is not a witch hunt against windows users...ok...but this gives you an idea of what I am trying to ask how to defeat?
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...75#post2982475

cheerio

allend · 09-02-2008, 09:05 AM

My Dell desktop was supplied with a Windows partition (sda2) and another partition (sda3) that I converted to an extended partition containing a number of logical volumes that house my Linux distributions.

I noted that there was also a Dell Utility partition (sda1) and another primary partition (sda4) that I believe houses the recovery image. It is marked with with an Id of "db" in the output from fdisk -l shown below. I do not recall at the moment whether the sda4 partition was visible to Windows.

Quote:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe686f016

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 6 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 7 5229 41953747+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5230 29787 197262135 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 29788 30393 4867695 db CP/M / CTOS / ...
/dev/sda5 5230 10452 41953716 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 10453 15675 41953716 6 FAT16
/dev/sda7 15676 20898 41953716 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 20899 26121 41953716 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 26122 26382 2096451 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda10 26383 27035 5245191 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda11 27036 29787 22105408+ 83 Linux

PTrenholme · 09-02-2008, 11:10 AM

For what it's worth, I recently purchased a HP laptop with Vista pre-installed on a 160GB SATA Hd. As soon as I got it home, I shrank the main Vista partition to 80GB and installed Kubuntu n the freed space, replacing the MBR with GRUB. I left the "recovery" partition unchanged, but was careful to point GRUB at the Vista partition instead of the (active) recovery partition as the place from which to boot Vista. Here's what my GRUB looks like:

Code:

$ cat /Ubuntu/boot/grub/menu.lst | grep -v ^# | grep -v ^$
default saved                                                               
timeout         10                                                          
savedefault=true                                                            
title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic                     
                savedefault                                                 
root            (hd0,4)                                                     
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=17841f9e-fa3a-4850-aa52-0e6d0ba242e3 ro quiet splash                                                  
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic                              
quiet                                                                           
<snip...>
title           Other operating systems:
root
title Fedora (2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64)
        savedefault
        root (hd0,4)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64 ro root=UUID=ffccf6e4-8321-46a7-9ef0-48e2aeedc325 rhgb quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64.img
title Windows Vista
        savedefault
        root            (hd0,0)
        makeactive
        chainloader     +1
title           Windows Recovery
        root            (hd0,1)
        makeactive
        chainloader     +1

I've had no problems booting to any of the partitions, including the "recovery" one. (Although I've not attempted any "recovery," I have booted it just to see what it would say.)

Oh, for what it's worth, here's my drive layout:

Code:

$ sudo /sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sd?
[sudo] password for Peter:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa602a602

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        8820    70846618+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           17927       19457    12297757+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            8821       17926    73143945    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            8821       17549    70115661   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           17550       17926     3028221   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00032256

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1          25      200781   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2              26       38913   312367860   8e  Linux LVM