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Dell "hidden" partitions - request clarification to my original question
The responder, Davet50 in linux, confirmed that the 80M FAT partitin was indeed the repository for the Dell Diagnostics on my Latitude 1420. However he indicated that it is not a "normal" partition but is an EISA partition.
And he also said that "the secondary partitions are not FAT but NTFS partitions. FAT partitions went by the way side with the release of XP". This statement is confusing to me because the PARTED command results in:
Disk /dev/sda: 160GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 82.3MB 82.2MB primary fat16
2 82.3MB 2237MB 2155MB primary fat32
3 2237MB 2443MB 206MB primary ext3 boot
4 2443MB 160GB 158GB extended lba
5 2443MB 5083MB 2640MB logical linux-swap
6 5083MB 160GB 155GB logical ext3
and FAT partitionsare definitely "in use" here
Can someone provide a clarification.
Thanks to Davet50 for the first bit of enlightenment. Perhaps I am missing some understanding of partitions, and can be made wiser so that his response no longer confuses me
Noanker
ToeBee
58 Posts
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September 15th, 2009 15:00
Yeah, I would trust the output of parted/fdisk. NTFS is definitely used for windows partitions but it does not surprise me at all that the recovery and diagnostics partitions still use FAT. FAT can be read by the simplest of boot loaders and by just about every non-windows operating system out there. A pure shot in the dark but if I had to guess I would say the diagnostics are probably a program that runs on top of freedos or something similar which would not have NTFS support. Similarly, if you are trying to restore a corrupted OS install you don't want to have to rely on windows to read the data off of an NTFS filesystem to restore the OS.
PaJoe
32 Posts
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September 16th, 2009 03:00
you can trust qtparted, parted, fdisk ect...
It has been a long time since we formated my wife's 1420N but I think the following Dell web page gives a good idea of the partitions, at least on my wife's 1420N, which came with 8.04
http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_8.04/Default_Partitions
We no longer use that setup, formatted and use the general releases, but then again our computers are always a mix of various parts of ubuntu.kubuntu,xfce, lxde etc.- as I guess many linux users do mix and match. I don't think we ever used the inculded Dell diagnostics. However, you may need them during any waranty period depending on the person that answers the phone, as they are may only be trained enough to help you if you have those specific diagnostic programs.
We stopped using the Dell setup disks as they lagged behind the general ubuntu/kubuntu releases. We found the AMD64 bit version worked better on the 1420N, but I confess , I really don't remember the exact problem with had with the 32 bit version, it has been a while. I do know we ended up using wicd rather than the default network manager in kubuntu, and use compiz fusion icon rather than the kde desktop effects - even though my wife really never uses the rotating sphere (cube) desktop, it's there if she want to turn it on. I on the other hand use it a lot.
Dave seems to be a good person, but his knowledge seems to be more with Windows, you will find more experienced ubuntu users at the Dell section of the Ubuntu forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=342
Likewise, I think Dell is doing a great job, and certainly Dell has knowledgeable people, but for more specific ubuntu questions you will find more answers from experienced ubuntu users on one of the ubuntu/kubuntu forums. The more you stray from the intial setup that you buy from Dell, the less help you can expect from Dell. I still come here , mostly to see what is new from Dell, as I am often interested in buying something new and we use linux exclusively, these forums are great to see which Dell hardware works best with linux.
joe
on edit: keep in mind that if you start changing the partitions, grub may not know what is going on, and you will have to change the grub setup as well