Mike Rosberg wrote:
: Considering your desire to preserve the current HD formatting and software I
: recommend installing Linux in a virtual machine hosted by the original OS.
: VMware Server should do nicely and can be used at no cost.
A viable option, but it might miss the point.
Some questions for John:
: > Restore CDs haven't been provided by most vendors for a while (but I'll be
: > glad to know of
: > any that do, or better those that provide a real OS disk). Lenovo manual
: > doesn't even seem
: > to suggest that you can burn the recovery partition to CD/DVD (that was
: > Acer's way a
: > couple of years ago).
Lenovo has the option of providing recovery CDs, but only on certain models,
and the recovery is for XP, not Vista. AFAIK, there's a fee for obtaining
the recovery media (probably in the order of $60), and you have to actually
call Lenovo to get it.
Looking at the original partitioning you sent out:
-----
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
-----
What are each of those partitions for? Since you have to shrink one of the
partitions to make room, which would you shrink?
I see two reasonable approaches for this:
1) Shrink the 187GB NTFS partition. Add another extended partition taking
up this free space (if this is possible -- it's been a while since I've
worked with partition tables). Install grub to the MBR, and use grub to
boot. I'm pretty sure it can boot to an extended partition these days.
2) Looks like a 230GB drive-ish...? Buy a drive that's >300GB, carve off a
partition at the end (can be in an LV, can be in an extended partition)
that's the size of ${ORIGINAL_DRIVE} + 1GB. Install Linux into the space
that's left, and use VMWare/VirtualBox to 'boot' from that LV/extended
partition. It's a bit tricky to get going, but essentially, a dd will
suffice for imaging into place.
The benefit of #1 is that if it gets going, it's something that has zero
cost, and can be partially automated. The drawback is that it might be
tricky to get going, and by resizing NTFS partitions, it's possible the
manufacturer will call the warranty voided (or whatever terminology they use
these days).
The benefit of #2 is that it leaves the original drive intact, meaning any
RMA can be done with little hassle. The drawback is that it requires the
up-front cost of a drive, and a fair bit of nitty-gritty work (though, like
#1, is somewhat automatable once a procedure is defined). (The other fringe
benefit is that you still have two operating systems, without the need to
dual-boot.)
However, both of these address this specific case, and not the general
tendancy.