IBM Thinkpad --- A few questions

[deadaim]

I'm going to receive the laptop in about 2 weeks and I have a few questions about the IBM thinkpad and how to partition it. I'm getting a 60gb harddrive and my goal is to have 15gb Windows XP and the rest for Linux.

1. Is there anyway to stop Windows XP from converting the harddrive to NTFS on the first boot? If it does change the harddrive to NTFS, will this affect the installation of Linux?

2. I'm assuming when I receive the laptop, there will only be a partition of Windows. How do I resize the partition? A link to where I can find the software would be appreciated.

3. In the IBM thinkpad, there is a hidden partition where all the recovery tools are. I know that BIOS is the reason it is hiding it. Where in BIOS would I set it to unhide it. Once I unhide it, is it safe to put in the gentoo 1.4 cd and fdisk and then erase that partition completely? Is there an easier way to do this? My goal here is to have the recovery cd's that I can ask IBM to send me and have those few GBs free for my using.

4. Once I have the Windows partition down to 15gb and the hidden parition deleted, I will only have 1 parition (the windows partition). If I follow the installation guide and add 3 more partitions (boot partition, swap partition, and root partition), there is no need to have any extended partitions, right?

5. Let's say I keep the hidden partition. That would mean I would have 2 partitions. Adding the 3 partitions for the boot, swap, and root partitions would give me 5 partitions. I know that is a "no-no" and I would need an extended partition. Is this correct?

I know these are a lot of questions, but I want my thinkpad experience to be perfect.

Thanks for all your help.

[steveb]

[deadaim]

Thanks for the reply!

One more question.

Is there anyway to have Windows XP on a FAT32 partition instead of an NTFS partition? How would I go about doing this?

[steveb]

[deadaim]

Again, thanks for your input.

I've been reading around, and do you know if IBM gives first time buyers a discount or anyother discounts?

[steveb]

[deadaim]

Well, I am a student at the University of Florida, but I can't find anywhere on http://www.ibm.com where they state they give discounts for students. Maybe it's something I'm not seeing.

Perhaps somebody can point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

[cesar]

I used to have an IBM T30. I did not know much about disk partitioning, so this is what I did,

1- Using Partition Magic, I resized the W2K partition to about 10 Gb (the disk was 40). I deleted the hidden partition.
2- Deleted the rest 30GB (selected no format type or empty space)
3- Inserted the RH disk and asked it to use available space followed the instructions on installation (then RH would make the partition table similar to the one I would use in Gentoo keeping Windows untouched and making the swap, root, and boot partitions automatically)
4- Installed Gentoo.

I know this was not the way to do it, but back then I did not know much about it and was afraid of messing up with my disk.

About the hidden partition, I deleted it and asked IBM to send me the recovery disks instead (I bought the machine in Japan and they did not give me the CDs unless I requested (buy) them )

You're using NTFS, so if you want to share files, probably you should create an intermediate FAT32 partition to read and write from and to WXP and LINUX (kind of a bridge in between the two).

[cesar]

This will be probably helpful

http://www.linux-laptop.net/ibm.html

Good luck

[deadaim]

Thanks for all the links!

I was looking into the discounts that IBM offers and it seems that it does not any promotion for the specific laptop I'm looking at. Just to let you guys know, its a Thinkpad R50 1.7ghz. They only have promotions on Thinkpad R50 1.4ghz laptops and others that don't interest me.

[snowmoon]

ntfsresize-1.9 + qtparted are a complete freeware Partition magic replacement and it works wonders. I have used it quite a number of times recently to resize down ntfs partitions. It can deal with fragmentation and other windows nasties too. The knoppix disk has qtparted, but I needed to download the static ntfsresize binary and run it before attempting to resize in order to get the partitions small enough.

I personally would leave the recovery partition alone and just create one large extended partition to cut up into linux peices.

[Paradigmbreak]

Just a Thinkpad related point-
If you call the support number and can navigate yourself through the phone tree (takes about three minutes), you can get to a tech who will send you a copy of the reinstall disks no questions asked. They sent mine overnight for free. (this assumes youa re on warrranty of some type). I would order them no matter what. It was really no hassle and given the number of special drivers and utilities my t41 has, it saves a lot of time.

[Hauser]

Is it feasible to tar everything of XP on a ntfs partition, put it somewhere else, then after converting the ntfs partition into vfat, untar the XP back onto it?
_________________
AMD Athlon XP 2600+; 512M RAM;
nVidia FX5700LE; Hitachi 120Gb
2.6.9-nitro4, reiser4, linux26-headers+nptl

Do I like to compile everything?
Positive definite!

[allucid]

you can convert fat to ntfs but i am pretty sure you cannot convert ntfs back to fat.

[Hauser]

I meant reformatting the partition as vfat after tarring and backing up everything, and then untar them back onto it.
_________________
AMD Athlon XP 2600+; 512M RAM;
nVidia FX5700LE; Hitachi 120Gb
2.6.9-nitro4, reiser4, linux26-headers+nptl

Do I like to compile everything?
Positive definite!

[steveb]