[ ThinkPadT43 ][ Previous | Next ]
Partitioning
Preparation
Like my R40, the T43 came with Windows XP installed in an NTFS partition, and a "hidden" area containing IBM/Lenovo utilities. On the R40 the hidden "pre-desktop" area didn't seem to be an actual partition, since it was possible to create 4 primary partitions in addition to the hidden area. On the T43 this seems to have changed. It may be an actual partition.
Installing System Commander 8 (my boot manager of choice) rendered the hidden area unusable. Couldn't invoke it from the access IBM button at boot time. SC8 indicated it was a bootable partition, but booting it failed. This brings me to a rather important point:
Use the installed back-up utility to make a set of recovery CD/DVDs before doing anything else! Certainly before installing System Commander! IBM doesn't ship recovery media with the unit, nor do they provide it as a freebie in the 1st 30 days like they did with the R40. You are expected to make your own set with the installed tools. I made a CD and DVD, which saved my butt later.
The T43 came with a 60G drive installed. I purchased a 100G Seagate to replace it, but couldn't use it. See T43 Other Issues for more information. In the end, I installed an 80G IBM/Lenovo drive that Lenovo gave me as compensation for the hassle. Fortunately I had my recovery CD/DVD set to load the new HD from.
Partitioning
Once SC8 was installed I used its boot-time partitioning tools to delete the damaged IBM service partition and shrink the NTFS partition to ~40G. I defragmented the NTFS partition first (in XP). Then created a ~10G FAT32 scratch partition to be shared by all operating systems (since the Unixen can't safely read/write NTFS), a ~10G Solaris partition, and a ~10G Extended partition. In the extended partition I created a Linux / partition of ~10G and a 512M Linux swap partition. Skipped the boot partition since it would be included in / in this installation.
Actually, the initial partitioning scheme and Fedora Core 3 installation had only a single linux primary parition with a swap file. When I cleaned up the mess caused by the Fedora Core 4 install, I went to an extended partition and logical root and swap partitions for Linux.
The details are in System Commanders Scout utility report (run from XP): T43 Scout report
It is necessary to create (at least) the Solaris partition in advance - with System Commander or fdisk on a Linux CD/DVD. If Solaris is allowed to create its own partition, it is very likely to create a partition which overlaps the others on the drive. Even with a pre-existing partition Solaris will trash the partition tables. It is a very good idea to take a snapshot of the partition tables with Scout or Linux fdisk, and use that information to restore the damaged tables after installing Solaris. I use the SCIN tool which can be run from the bootable System Commander CD.
A Solaris install will probably overwrite System Commander's boot information. It may be necessary to boot XP via the Solaris grub bootloader and run SC to re-install it to the MBR.
[ ThinkPadT43 ][ Previous | Next ]