T21 non-dos partition

[iann070]

According to FDisk my 20GB hard drive in my T21 has a Non-DOS partioned of 177MB (which is 1% of the hard drive space).

What is this Non-DOS partition?
It can't be a Recovery partition as it's only 177MB.
Is the BIOS setup program stored in this partition like on my Compaq Armada (which would mean that if I upgraded the hard drive I wouldn't have access to the BIOS).

Cheers
Ian

[Bgradid]

It's definitley nothing to do with the bios. Has anyone ever installed linux on your laptop? It might be the boot partition from a linux install left over (size sounds almost about right)

[iann070]

Thanks for the advice.
I bought the T21 second hand so anything is possible.
My Compaq Armada has a 12MB non-DOS partition which is used to store the BIOS set-up programs so I thought that the Thinkpad may do the same, (although 177MB is quite big for a BIOS set-up partition).

The previous owner has installed Windows 98SE from the recovery discs but I will be doing a fresh install of Windows XP, so before I do I might as well use FDisk and get rid of that 177MB non-DOS partition and just have one partition and use the whole hard drive so not to leave any leftovers from a previous O/S.

Cheers

[chan_man]

does the laptop offer a F11 during startup?.. some T2x models had a recovery available by pressing F11 at startup. 177meg may not be enough for such a partition but in any case, you are planning on loading XP you may as well get rid of it.