Reformat ? RE:keeping a OEM Restore Partition

[jolancer]

First I hope this subject is ok here since it does re dual booting, however its the first stage in Xp/linux dual booting, so it realy only concerns XP atm. however I havn't recieved much help elsewere so i figrued perhaps a linux forum would be more up on the subject although it may seem a bit particular as your read on. none the less. Thx for looking. Appreciated

system: Acer Aspire One D255

IF your already familiar with some of the OEM Recovery Partitions that some come with, feel free to skip the next 2 paragraphs my question is bellow them.

It comes with an OEM partition as the first primary. Does not show up in explorer or allow me to assign it a drive letter, but does show up in Diskmgmt. Its Volume Lable: PQSERVICE ,Its partition type/name in MBRwiz shows as "12-OEMIA" and Boot type = No

The computer BIOS is equipped with a Disk-to-Disk(D2D) recovery option. So i can just press (Alt+F10) before boot to run Acer's OEM disk restore program to restore the OS to factory default installation from the hidden OEM Partition.

(QUESTION): I want to keep this OEM Partition intact/usable. But reformat the computer with my own xpPro disk (among other things listed later). So I'v been doing do diligence so to try not screwing up the OEM partition. Is it safe for me to Install xpPro sp1 onto the 2nd primary partition? or are there precaustions i must take beforhand?

I have already backed up the OEM MBR with MBRwiz, and though research not for my particular situation have found suggestions to HIDE other partitions as a precaustion especialy since XP likes the 1st primary part, However i tryed and failed to HIDE it with MBRwiz as Disk=0 Part=1 gave me = ERROR 558: Unable to hide this partition type

Also my Acer OEM partition is activated through the BIOS i assume?(not sure if other components are involved-ex.the MBR(backed up incase tho)... And i know how to specify and partition my XP installation, however i dont know 100% how the xp Bootloader acts or installs - or if it were to try to install or steel any of the first primary partition?or if it could even steel from that partition type if it wanted.. So not realy sure if i need to worry about it or not?

So please any guidence from someone more experienced or knowledgeable would be greatfully appreciated. I just dont want to take the first reformat step befor i know for sure the XP install isnt going to damage my 1st Primary OEM partition that the comp was shipped with.

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bellow this line isnt a concern for me atm, but incase anyone takes the time to read through and possibly has pointers i maynot already be aware of... Keeping the OEM partitions is my choice and asside from my goal of Dual booting this netbook with XPpro and Linux. I'v done a lot of research on dual-booting and linux, so im fairly confident about the rest of the process at this time.. Ina nutshell though - my entire goal is =
-keep the OEM recovery part
Multi boot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
-Partition HDD accordingly with GParted
-install xpPro first as recomended
-Install my first linux distro(ubuntu Server Ed/grub legacy)
/old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/ubuntu-9.04-server-i386.iso
-copy grub from MBR to custom GRUB Bootloader partition
/ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Multiple_OS_Installation#Copy_boot_files_to_the_sm all_Grub_partition
-modify Bootloader to chainload so to Boot XP and any aditional Linux Distros
-backup setup with Partimage or something comperable

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!

The recovery partition will remain intact and usable so long as you don't overwrite it during your Linux installation.
Windows will, by default, try to over-write the whole disk if you let it. But there are options there to install only to disk space that you want used. It's been a while since I've installed Windows, so I can't describe the steps with any real clarity.

Windows will also over-write any boot-loader that you currently have, so your safest bet would be to install Windows first, then install your selected Linux distro. Linux boot-loader, usually GRUB, will easily detect Windows and any other OS's and allow you to choose which one you would like to boot into for that session.

For more detailed information, you can boot to any LiveCD... no changes will be made to your hard drive. Open a terminal window and type the following:

fdisk -l     (that's a lower case L)

Copy and paste the results back here. We'll be able to see what you have installed, and where it resides.

[jolancer]

Thank u sir. will post back tomarrow with fdisk info

[atreyu]

Just a thought - if you are uber-paranoid about screwing up your disk, you can always back it up to an image (or another hard drive) first. you can do this with any Linux Live/Rescue CD/DVD (via the 'dd' command - google it) and there are some freeware boot CDs that do this too in a nice GUI environment (Acronis is one that I've used before, but I don't remember the license).

[jolancer]

@jayd512
here you go if it helps at all Thx... fdisks info:
Note - i havn't formated or partitioned it at all yet. this is the default install with the OEM XP on partition 2

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1c8b2f0a

DeviceBoot_Boot___Start___End_____Blocks___Id__Sys tem
/dev/sda1___________1___1437__11534336__12__CompaqDiagn ostics
/dev/sda2___*____1437__19458__144753664__7__HPFS/NTFS

EDIT: sorry for being posted getto like, dont no how to post spaces in the forum
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@atreyu
Thanks for the suggestion. and i probably would have done it already if it wernt for the fact theres no optical devices on the netbook, and swapping HDD's(someone else suggested elsewere) requires me to dissasemble the netbook which voids the warranty... and pritty much defeats my purpose of saving the OEM Recovery partition for resale value. Thx anyway tho

[yancek]

It would seem that since you are planning to install a version of windows over another version of windows on a factory installed system, you would be better served going to a windows/microsoft site or an Acer site. I haven't installed windows for years so I don't know what the xp bootloader will do. I would expect it would put its files on the filesystem partition (indicated above as sda2). sda2 is a primary partition and as far as I know, that's all it needs to boot plus some code in the mbr. Perhaps someone with more windows knowledge will come along?

[atreyu]

@atreyu
Thanks for the suggestion. and i probably would have done it already if it wernt for the fact theres no optical devices on the netbook, and swapping HDD's(someone else suggested elsewere) requires me to dissasemble the netbook which voids the warranty... and pritty much defeats my purpose of saving the OEM Recovery partition for resale value. Thx anyway tho

yeah, you don't want to void anything while the warranty is still worth anything.

when i do this type of thing, i usually boot into Linux rescue mode and start networking. then i access some other large storage space via NFS or Samba and write the dd output file there - just FYI.

[jolancer]

Thx for the info atreyu. Sorry im a newb to linux, if you dont mind me asking incase u know off hand...

Iv looked into linux imaging apps such as Partimage and Clonezilla, Is there an advantage of using the DD command instead? or is it basically the same except without compression? Although i think i did read somewere partimage doesnt work with the ext4 format.

And when you say "via NFS or Samba" are those the names of the Linux distro's you may boot from ur saying?

[atreyu]

Iv looked into linux imaging apps such as Partimage and Clonezilla, Is there an advantage of using the DD command instead? or is it basically the same except without compression? Although i think i did read somewere partimage doesnt work with the ext4 format.

Not sure what Partimage is doing behind the scenes, but who cares, as long as it works! It appears to be more efficient than straight 'dd' b/c it does not copy unused blocks - whereas dd is a straight binary copy of the entire drive to an image (or another drive). Using dd for this reason is appealing. It is also unappealing for the same reason (if you have a huge drive but not tons of data on it, e.g.).

It sounds like Partimage is the ticket for you, for backing up that OEM partition - caveat: i've never used it. According to their website, it does support ext4, btw.

And when you say "via NFS or Samba" are those the names of the Linux distro's you may boot from ur saying?

NFS is Network File System, i think, and it is a client/server file-sharing application layer protocol, used by Unix/Linux servers. Samba (SMB) is the implementation of Windows File Sharing for Linux.

You could use either one of these methods to access drive space on another PC (Unix/Linux for NFS and either Linux or Windows for Samba) provided that that PC is set up to serve out such shares.

[jolancer]

Thank you, the more info the better imo. appreciated.

however just to note tho, you glanced too quickly... ext 4 is in there List on that support page, But is Tagged Unsupported