[ltp] 600E partitioning for DOS/Windows 2000/Linux triple-boot

[André Wyrwa]

On Mit, 2004-08-11 at 00:24, Michelle Klein-Hass wrote:
> Hi guys...
> 
> I am going to get a 40GB hard drive in about a week. Currently my trusty 
> ThinkPad 600E has a 10GB IBM TravelStar drive in it. The new drive will be a 
> Toshiba MK4025GAS, 4200RPM, 8MB Cache. 
> 
> There is currently a wonderful deal at NewEgg on this drive:
> http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-149-014&depa=0
> 
> Anyway, my friend Chad Page let me know that there is a "gotcha" about running 
> a drive that is >8GB: neither Linux nor Windows boot successfully from a boot 
> partition that is more than 8GB away from sector zero. 
> 
> I need to come up with a partitioning strategy that can help me keep the two 
> main OSes, plus DOS for using PS2.EXE and maintaining a hibernation file, 
> happy.
> 
> Would Loadlin perhaps be a solution? Boot into DOS and kick into Linux via 
> LOADLIN.EXE? Or can a simpler solution be found that can allow LILO or GRUB 
> to manage the booting?
> 
> Also: the 10GB TravelStar is going into an UltraBay HD module. I was able to 
> find one on eBay for $20...those puppies are pretty rare now and I think I 
> scored big. Really ingenious design: you keep the drive in its sled and just 
> snap it into the HD module. This meant I had to buy another sled for the 
> soon-come drive, but eh, they're fairly cheap. I intend to reformat as FAT32 
> from 2K after all the info is pulled off of it.
> 
> Thing is: how do I get this drive to work under Linux too? Same question for a 
> Zip 100 UltraBay module. 
> 
> Thanks for the help,
> Michelle
> -- 
> Michelle Klein-Hass
> Box 2273, Van Nuys, CA 91404-2273
> Brought to you by Linux, KDE and KMail...try it, you'll like it!

Hei,

i think DOS is your only problem here. Make it the first primary
partition and keep it not too big - but i guess you won't need much
space there anyway.

Other things you should take care of:

DOS might have a problem recognising partitions that are using non-dos
geometry. To be on the safe side this should be the first partition you
create and it should be done with dos fdisk or - better - the
partitioning tool of the Win2K installation routine.

Even though Win2K might be installed into a logical partition, it can
only put it's boot loader into a primary one. So your Win2K partition
should be a primary.

For Linux one old strategy to get around the 1024 cylinders problem was
to create a very small partition at the beginning of the harddisk which
was then mounted under /boot into the linux filesystem tree and hence
used for kernel and boot files only. This is not necessary anymore,
since lilo and grub don't have this issue anymore as was stated already.
However, I'm still using this approach. It becomes handy in some
situations. For instance in an emergency i can boot knoppix, mount my
boot partition into the /boot dir of the knoppix system and treat it as
if it belong there. The backdrawing is that this will waste a primary
partition (at least if you make it a primary one).

If you want to exchange data between Linux and Windows you'd probably
like to create a large vfat partition for your data. At least this is
the most convenient way for the time being.

If your DOS partition was created before installing Win2K, the Win2K
installer will most likely treat it as C:, which can become a problem
with some win software (for instance the IBM configuration utility -
grr) which have hardwired install paths to C:. The best way to deal with
this is to hide the DOS partition (using grub) when installing Win2K.
This needs some brains and might come out as a nasty process (i almost
manage to convince WinXP to install itself twice on the same harddisk,
both times as C, but then gave up short before i had the solution,
because i felt that i had spent enough time with that). However, it is
possible (my problem was mostly, that one of the two XP distributions
was not on CD, but was lying in some folder on the same harddisk).
If you don't do that, there are still ways to trick at least some of the
C-demanding applications into installing to D: or whaterver anyway.

You should use the bootloaders functionality to make a partition active,
when directly booting DOS and Win2K from it. So, if you boot to DOS,
make the DOS partition the active one, if you boot to Win2K make the
Win2K partition active. This is a good idea, because for instance the
Win2K bootloader always gets installed to the active partition. (And i
don't know if it boots at all when it's partition is not active.)

Good luck,
André.