I want to help a friend rig up a new laptop with Linux, but preferably without wiping off the current Windows installation. The distro of choice is likely to be SUSE. The reason this is a Windows question is that there is this weird partition already on the laptop in addition to the C: drive which I don't know what does and that I haven't seen before.

 

Screen:

 

Is it safe to wipe off that second partition and put Linux in that space? If not, how will it be possible to resize the partition? I'm confused, because I never use the images of Windows that come preinstalled, I always wipe and start from scratch.

 

Any help would be great, thanks.

yeah wipe it, it's not an EISA partition per-se, it's just a hidden partition,

 

you probably cannot SEE it in windows explorer because the partition info is constructed in such a way as to hide it, many OEMS do this.

 

most likely all it is is a backup partition which holds a ghost copy (mirror) of the factory installed windows

 

you could even copy the ghost file first and then zap the partition

 

cheers

anyweb

Quote:yeah wipe it, it's not an EISA partition per-se, it's just a hidden partition, 

you probably cannot SEE it in windows explorer because the partition info is constructed in such a way as to hide it, many OEMS do this.

 

most likely all it is is a backup partition which holds a ghost copy (mirror) of the factory installed windows

 

you could even copy the ghost file first and then zap the partition

 

cheers

anyweb

 

OK, thanks. :)That makes it quite easy to do, considering that we already have about 4GB of space to work with, we don't have to go resizing any partitions! So, thanks IBM :), that makes it really easy to get Linux on there.

 

Thanks, anyweb. :)

hey anyweb, i have the same problem too, but i want to copy the ghost file, do you have any idea on how to do that?

thanks

what computer is it exactly ?

 

as the partition is hidden and not active you could use windows 98 fdisk to simply make IT the active partition, then copy the data off it, then use fdisk again to make your normal c: drive the active partition

 

be careful though!

 

cheers

anyweb

The computer is an Advent 7111 laptop, and the it operates on Windows Media Center, so there aren't really a lot of options, I tried assigning a letter to the partition through Partition Magic 8, but apparently I cannot do so, although I can explore it and copy stuff(I'm not sure about the copying part, I haven't tried it yet),

but I want to burn this partition to a dvd and make it bootable, it is supposed to be able to restore my laptop to factory condition, although they do supply an utility specifically designed for this, that doesn't work either, it just says "No valid CD/DVD boot structure foud in I386".

Any help, or redirection to somewhere I could get help is very appreciated.