what order to install the following OS's ?

[Benja]

Hi

I have a X31 and I want to set it up on an empty harddisk.
What I want to have is

- the Rescue&Recovey-Partition (and the abillity to directly go there via the IBM ACCESS key at startup) for quickly restoring WinXP
- WinXP
- Linux (guess, it will be Debian or one of its derivates)

I would like the following partitions: (aprox. sizes)

hda1 <- System for WinXP (c:\) NTFS 10 GB
hda2 <- exchange data (d:\) FAT32 2 GB
hda3 <- data for WinXP (e:\) NTFS 15 GB
hda4 <- Linux (/) ext3 6 GB
hda5 <- Linux-swap 0,5 GB

The hidden partition(s?) and recovery-data have to be somewhere, too. I dont realy care, where they are.

I will get RecoveryCDs soon (yesterday I was told within the next 10 days).

My questions:
What do I have to do in what order ?
I guess, I first have to setup the Rescue-Partition via RecoveryCDs.
Shall I create all partitions before ? Or only some ? What bootloader should I use and where (if linux) should I put it (MBR?) ?

Thank you for answers !

Benja

[jdhurst]

If I were doing that, I think I would use Partition Magic to accomplish it. That will let you create partitions and leave the hidden protected area intact. The hidden protected area is commonly called a partition in this forum. It most definitely is *not*. There is an IBM whitepaper around about this. .. JD Hurst

[Benja]

I read a lot of topic here and in other ThinkPad-forums and in many of them problems occoured after using PartitionMagic. Mostly, the IBM ACCESS button did not work properly. You can not access the Recovery-System.
That problem did not alway occour, but sometimes.
And as you can imagine the whole installing process will take quite some time. I do not have the time to try that more than once.

By the way: would you partition before or after using RecoveryCDs ?

Thanks so far!

[jdhurst]

The next way, given the problems you might have, is to do it the way a number of us do - use VMware. That is what I do. There is more to gain this way as the systems can run simultaneously. If you do need to re-image, you can copy off the virtual machines to a backup drive before re-imaging. ... JD Hurst

[LtTPfan]

If you run into the problem of the Access IBM button (Thinkpad button on some systems) or F11 button not working, you can fix the MBR with the Recovery Repair Diskette.

[carbon_unit]

I used the recovery cd's to restore XP on my T42, then I installed Xandros using the Xandros installer and partition resizer (it can properly resize NTFS) and my recovery options (Access IBM button or F11) are intact. If I use the Access IBM button to restore it will probably completely restore the Hard Drive and remove all my Linux installation.
I installed LILO in the MBR of hda.