[ltp] recovery partition useful? (was Re: Installed Grub...)

[Paul Fox]

igor v. rafienko wrote:
 > on Jan 19, 2007, 11:20, Paul Fox wrote:
 > 
 > > so, show of hands -- has anyone successfully restored their machine
 > > using the ibm recovery partition on (any) thinkpad?
 > 
 > Multiple times (T43, 2669-based). The rescue process is roughly:
 > 
 > * reboot from an R&R DVD, follow the instructions.

so, if i read this correctly, you haven't actually restored from
the R&R _partition_.  only from the R&R DVD?

 > * it will mangle the MBR, the partition table and roll out windows on the
 >    first partition. The first partition would also occupy the entire
 >    drive. This step takes a lot of time (a couple of hours).
 > 
 > * once windows is done, I restore the partition table (to what it used
 >    to be before; this is done from a liveCD), resize the windows partition
 >    to what it used to be with ntfsresize, repartition the drive and reboot
 >    into linux to check that everything is still working.
 > 
 >    There is a slight problem here -- technically, there is no guarantee
 >    that windows will not spread far and wide on that primary partition that
 >    spans the entire hard drive right after R&R has finished changing the
 >    partition table. However, I have not had any problems with that actually
 >    happening (but then, again, I reboot from a liveCD to
 >    restore the partition table immediately after R&R is finished with
 >    restoring the laptop to the factory state). The worst case scenario is
 >    the R&R restore process overwriting the linux installation.

i'm shocked that this ever works.  i hope you do thorough filesystem
checks on your linux partition!  i confess it never would have occurred
to me to expect linux to still work after R&R had put windows on the
whole disk.  certainly worth trying, though!

 > I am yet unsure as to what to do with the R&R partition. It's pretty 
 > useless in case of the hdd failure and I do have R&R DVDs (two copies, 
 > actually). But I am a bit concerned that R&R recovery (should I need it 

can one simply order R&R dvds from lenovo?

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 32.0 degrees)