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[OCLUG-Tech] Re: Laptop partitioning

Have been helping a friend with a new Lenovo G550 to set up Ubuntu. We have eventually decided (for now) to put Jaunty on a USB key (already tested an external HD and it's fine) because the wonderful nasties at Lenovo have put 5 partitions on the drive, plus leaving some unallocated space.

As I recall, the structure was

1 MB free unallocated
200 MB NTFS /dev/sda1
187 GB NTFS /dev/sda2
30 GB NTFS /dev/sda3 (extended)
     30 GB NTFS /dev/sda5
14.5 GB NTFS /dev/sda4

(with some odd unallocated bits of about 1MB between)

This, of course, means that one needs to do some work to set up a Linux partition. On my wife's Asus Eee 1005HA, there were 4 partitions (C: D: recovery and winboost), but D: was empty and same size as C:, so replaced it with Karmic with no fuss.

Does anyone have a good strategy for dealing with the Lenovo-style situation, which I fear is more or less a deliberate setup to block dual boot? This might make a very good tutorial / advice topic, and of course be beneficial to the Linux community generally, since many folk are reluctant to go to all-Linux right away. I find they eventually forget how to use Windows once they have Linux, but getting them going means finding convenient ways to set up dual boot.

Cheers, JN