Thinkpad Hidden Partition & MBR

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 09:46:26 -0000 (GMT)
> From: "Thomas Beer" <mailings at analogon.com>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> I consider buying an T41 or T42. What I couldn't check out
> on the web, the archive nor in other lists is how to handle
> the hidden partition and the existing installation of M$.
> For the time being I would like to keep XP and repartition
> a 60GB disk. It seems unclear which bootloader c/should be
> used and the procedure of installation (generally I'm firm
> installing FreeBSD). Any experiences installing FBSD on
> a recent T4x with a hidden partition?

If you get a ThinkPad with a "hidden partition" for system restore, the
first thing you should do is contact IBM support and request a free
restore CD. It's only free for a limited time after you have bought the
system, so don't wait.

At that point you can safely delete the hidden partition and use
Partition Magic(tm) or some similar program to re-size the Windows NTFS
and add a FreeBSD partition. Since FreeBSD can only read the NTFS
partition, you probably want to create a FAT32 partition, as well as
this will facilitate moving files between Windows and FreeBSD. I keep my
music files and some common data in the FAT partition.

If you install FreeBSD, I'd suggest using BootEasy as a part of the
FreeBSD install, but you can use GRUB, LILO, the NT boot tool, or pretty
much what you prefer. I'm not sure LILO and GRUB will work or V5,
though. BootEasy will boot both FreeBSD and Windows just fine.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634