120hhd+xp ; acer's partition question

i'm thinking of completely wiping the harddrive, which will include acer's ~6gb partition for their software and whatnot

should i do this? i dont know if i'll ever need it
with my dell laptop, i wiped it, but with the aspire one, it doesnt have a drive, so that partition could come in handy

what exactly is on it?

 

I guess, recovery software and tools.

 

All your drivers, Windows XP, and the other software pre installed.

 

dont delete it if you plan on restoring your xp later... thats where your recovery system is... if you delete that and later decided you wanted windows then your on your own in finding a windows xp disc to use..

there is no way for you also to make a back up disc so, we who have windows xp preinstalled are out of luck cleaning out the hard drive if we want to keep our recovery system available

 

i have my own xp pro disc

the thing about this is, i look at cdkey on the a-one and it says window xp home 'ulcpc' version

also, another problem is this is is how i want my hhd to be: xp pro, ubuntu, mac, and a storage partition

that's 4 partitions right there, which is the max, so if i really want this setup, i would have to delete the acer partition or not install one of the os'

 

wow what a collection of OS right there...

if you dont mind using that windows xp pro to your A-one then you will be fine, you just have to install the drivers. im sure you know that you cant use your A-one license key if you use your Windows Xp pro for install..

 

afaik its not fully understood how the 'ulcpc' version of XP differs from the regular version, I mean physically, apart from the liscense.

I'd be temped to keep the restore partition one way or another, if nothing else for the time if&when you want to sell the netbook.

 

4 partitions is only the max for primary partitions, you can make one of them an extended partition which can house multiple logical partitions.

I'm not sure if Mac OS or Win XP can be installed on logical partitions, but Ubuntu certainly can, and you should be able to use a logical partition for your storage. That means if the recovery partition is a primary, you can let Windows and Mac OSX both have primary partitions and use logical partitions for Ubuntu and the storage partition.

 

yeah, i'm keeping the acer partition, mostly because if i ever need to sell it or return it, i can restore the xp version

anyways, i've decided to keep the xp on it, i uninstalled everything, and it's blazing fast, it takes like 30 secs fully to boot into windows
without pagefile, the total install is 1.7gb, pretty slim

and i've decided to install ubuntu on it only, (i have a osx86 partition on my other laptop and i dont really use it much), with a storage space partition

the problem is the partition; how do i partition the 1 windows partition to several partitions without damaging the original partition
(maybe i should start a new thread, this is pretty off topic to my orginial question)

 

Okay, I'm new here and my A150X should arrive tomorrow or the day after that... but I just read, that despite of the 5 or 6 GB recovery partition, there is only one partition for the system & programs and the whole rest (= private data etc.). I want to split / re-partition the existing 110 (or whatever) GB to one system-partition and one data-partition without damaging the recovery-partition... Is this possible e.g. with Acronis Partition Expert without any side-effects or problems? What would you propose for splitting the harddisk space - 15 GB should be fine for WinXP + programs, or?

Is the recovery-partition completely full? Or would it be possible to save there some additional data? Is e.g. Acronis True Image (or any other system backup tool) able to read from such a hidden partition for using its backups? Would it be possible to extend the current 5 to 6 GB recovery-partition with a partition tool (like Acronis Partition Expert) and store (e.g with Acronis True Image) one or two system-images on that partition?

Greetings,
Methoz

 

i just install ubuntu, works, pretty troublesome to do so

the partition is like 6gbs, and there's 2 gbs free, i used partition magic to unallocate some space from the xp partition etc etc
i'm pretty sure gparted would work too if it booted

 

Confirmed, gParted worked for me (it won't autodetect - force Vesa).

Now I just need to figure out what to do...aside from ghosting the drive.

I guess I'll just install ubuntu or something..