[mdlug] T61 Thinkpad Recovery Partition

[Dave Arbogast]

You can enter "expert" option with the SuSE install and have full 
control of the partition - that is how I would do it. It will still 
offer you suggestions in expert mode.

If you don't like that option, some times it is just quicker to boot 
with another OS boot disk and partition the entire drive as one and bail 
on the install after the partition table was written. Do you have 
another OS on disk ? 


-dave

Peter Bart wrote:

>Hello Everyone,
>I just got my new (factory refurb) Thinkpad T61 and I allready have
>problems. <sigh> It seems the new machines come with a hidden partition
>that has a factory image on it that you can then use to reload the
>original os. There are lots of how to's regarding leaving that
>functionality in place and still have Linux work. I would like to
>reclaim that space; 7GB in this case; to use. 
>	Not knowing any of this, I loaded openSUSE 10.3 not really paying any
>attention to the amount of disk space available. I simply partitioned
>the available space, more than I've ever had. When it came time to boot
>into the fresh install I got a "operating system not found". So I found
>I hosed my rescue image; no big deal; but I still had a hidden partition
>as well.
>	I've gotten into the rescue system using openSUSE 10.3 dvd. I found the
>disk label using fdisk -l, then ran fdisk /dev/sda. I deleted all
>partitions from there with d, verified that with p which reports a 100GB
>disk. Then used w to save and exit. Then I started the openSUSE install
>again but when it came to the partitioning I still saw only 93GB
>available.  I went back in with the rescue system to verify that I
>indeed had saved the changes to the table and I saw a 100GB hd. Okay, so
>then I found out about the hidden part. So I read more about GRUB and I
>can unhide what is still hidden but I need to know what it's called.
>That's where I am right now. I can't seem to get any further. I can't
>seem to figure out how to find out what this hidden ?partition? is
>called to unhide it so I can delete it. 
>	I allready have XP disks on the way from Lenovo so I can then load it
>into VMWare, and I still have XP disks and valid COA's from my other
>boxes. I would really rather have the space! Any idea's?
>
>Best Regards,
>  
>