Harddrive Partitioning for Linux (inspiron 1300)

Question

Hello! I am new here and I do not know if this question has been asked before, but...
I have just recently bought an Inspiron 1300 laptop, and I was thinking of dual booting linux and windows on it, thus using partitionmagic to check out the partition, finding a few more partitions than expected.

I was wondering if it whould be safe to delete any of the preexisting partitions to use as the Linux partitions, or if I should use the free space I have on my "visible" harddrive. I am not afraid of losing data, as I dont have any personal stuff on it that might get deleted yet.

Or, the other option is to format the whole harddrive and reinstall windows and then Linux on some space saved from the windows partition, 3-5 gb maybe?

I have heard rumors that alot of dell machines have very specific hardware that might mess up if you try to change it or delete the original drivers, and I dont want to send a laptop back that I have had for two days.

I hope you could understand that... My specs are in my sig.

GreyMack · Answer

The smaller partition at the beginning of the disk is the Dell Utilities partition containing Dell Diagnostics. The larger partition at the end of the disk contains the Dell PC Restore utility and an image of the as-shipped configuration of all software on the C: partition. How would you perform hardware troubleshooting or recover in the event of system software corruption without these? How would you recover in the event of a hard drive failure?   You may wish to contact Dell for an operating system installation CD, and other CDs for software included with your system to allow performing a clean installation. Also check the Dell support site, behind the 'Notebooks' tab at the top of these forum pages, to review all the resources available, including owner's and service manuals, software installation guides, drivers, utilities, BIOS updates, hardware firmware updates, application software updates, and other downloads.   Drivers are normally saved and installed with the operating system, on the same partition. Linux drivers will be used when you boot to Linux, Windows drivers when you boot to Windows.     GM

sarflondon · Answer

There is a lot out there on the web regarding Dell laptops and Linux. If you did not know already, you could do worse than search http://www.linux-laptops.net you sound like you know a bit so there could be some useful information.

I have just bought an Inspiron 1300, similar spec to yours, blithely knowing nothing about laptops, never used one, never owned one (but hey...)

I don't really care about Windows and was just planning to stick Linux on it, however, currently I am failing to access the bios so I can boot from a DVD (I'm not going to sail forward totally stupidly, I'm going to try Knoppix before installing SUSE).

I wondered if you could tell me anything about how you got to your bios and any other stuff you've done?

Message Edited by sarflondon on 02-04-2006 08:49 AM

Khamero · Answer

I have yet to do so. =P
But as I tried just now, all you have to do is to press f2 during the bootup. I managed to quite easily get the DVD to boot, without any problems at all.

I have yet to tried knoppix on it, but if that should work well, then I guess there are linux drivers that work on a dell, and as such, I whould not be very worried about reinstalling the computer, even if I do lose those rescue partitions.

About the rescue stuff, I shall contact dell support, but somehow this computer will get repartitioned. I am not very worried about my computer breaking down, but then again, I dont have much information that I need to work that cannot be retrieved otherwise.

sarflondon · Answer

grateful - will try again (at work at moment so it will have to wait...)   happy to post back my experiences here - further, a couple of 1300 install stories have appeared on linux-laptops which is all encouraging

sarflondon · Answer

Summary:

SUSE 10 on Inspiron 1300 is totally OK, with the following provisos: booting from DVD didn't work, but CDs did, ACPI didn't work. Wireless is up, but took a couple of goes.

Aspect ratio on screen seems slightly wrong

Grateful to the three links below

Details

Inspiron didn't like DVD (because dual layer? because both 32/64 bit on DVD? who knows?)

CD1 success - but on "acpi disabled"

SUSE install prog identified close to 80 Gb disk in four partitions (whereas sold as a 60 Gb)

Failed to resize Windows partition to make room for Linux. (Apart from a slight worry that I might end up with an unusable laptop - see above, I didn't actually care so didn't try very hard).

Leapt in and did clean install - mysteriously partitioning shrank to slightly less than 60 Gb (is Windows XP lurking in a Dell restore partition should I ever travel to the dark side, who knows?, who cares?)

Straightforward (almost disappointingly...) successful install

sound - working "out of the box"
screen - correctly sey up as Intel915 1280x800 "ootb"

was expecting both of these to require a small amount of work based on
Ubuntu experience

hard disk - basic DMA turned on - used Yast to set it to Ultra33

ethernet - automatically found and set to DHCP "ootb"

modem not detected - might get round to exploring that but haven't dialled-up in years, any experience to share out there?

wireless - slight amount of work but you can step through it

The Ubuntu site has got the right drivers for the card (merci) It's in French but you should be able to pick your way through it.

This site

Andrewd18
gives you nearly all you need to know

However ndiswrapper didn't work. It turns out the failure is because I had upgraded the kernel. Andrew18 helpfully refers to http://www.suseforums.net for general support and I found this post on ndiswrapper and kernel update

It's basically right but once you've overwritten ndiswrapper.ko as suggested, remember to reinstall the driver. And then you are away.

Message Edited by sarflondon on 02-04-2006 08:54 AM

Message Edited by sarflondon on 02-06-2006 07:10 PM

Message Edited by sarflondon on 03-11-2006 08:51 AM

GreyMack · Answer

The Dell PC Restore feature isn't compatible with partitioning or a variety of other fairly standard system changes or adjustments, even a clean installation. There may be ways to make it work with modified partitioning, but it's probably just as well to replace it with something more useful.

The Dell PC Restore partition may be simply removed without any practical loss of recovery options, if you have the resources to perform a clean installation, and (preferably) imaging software to capture any images you wish and save them wherever you like, to provide quick and reliable recovery in any situation. Even without additional imaging software, the as-shipped configuration image may be saved to bootable DVD or elsewhere for storage off the primary system hard drive.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm

GM

Message Edited by GreyMack on 02-02-2006 03:11 PM

gaumet · Answer

Hi all,

screen - correctly sey up as Intel915 1280x800 "ootb"

You probably have (selected by default) the option to expand the screen to its real dimensions (1280x800) whatever the resolution. (Press F2 at boot to fix it). Despite ootb resolution 1280x800 mentionned by Suse 10.0, actual one is 1024x768...
To correct the situation, you have to install 855resolution (I think it's the name), read the docs, determine mode and resolution, and lauch it.
In order fort this not to be lots at next reboot, you have to create a script in /etc/init.d/ to lauch 855resolution with good parameters and activate it in level 5.

modem not detected - might get round to exploring that but haven't dialled-up in years, any experience to share out there?

Modem is a Conexant HSF and driver is available for suse here:
http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/hsf/full/downloads.php

Friendly yours,
DG.

JuvenileDetour · Answer

Is is safe to just delete the 3gb partition? I have the Windows XP cd and drivers, so I don't really have need for the restore stuff. Thanks ^_^

gaumet · Answer

Hi,
In my opinion, this partition is only of interest for those who do not have these CDs...
Personaly, I have suppressed all partitions before first to reinstall Windows (one partition) with my own burnt CDs, next to install Linux.
DG.

JuvenileDetour · Answer

Thanks! I'll be installign then ^_^

pcmikeone · Answer

This Board was very helpfull for installing SuSE 10 on my inspirion 1300.

Here are some hints, maybe helpfull:

Hardware:
Dell Inspirion 1300, 1 GB RAM, Celeron M 370,
60 GB Harddisk, WLAN etc.

I used OpenSuSE 10 - GM Download Version (DVD).
At Boot-screen, I selected Video: 1024x768 (changed after installing to 1200x800). Boot with no ACPI!

I took the expert-mode to reduce the size of XP-Partition and created a swap and a Linux-Partition (Reiserfs). Now it was possible to install all program I'd liked.

Because I liked to use wlan, on network-installation I decided for eth0 "start then cable plugged".

Sound didn't work immeditly; I used as root "alsaconf"; after running that tool and using the mixer, sound works fine.

Using wlan I installed ndiswrapper 1.10. I used the driver installed on XP-Partition. For starting at boot-time, I put the line:

modprobe ndiswarapper

as root to: /etc/init.d/boot.local

The rest of wlan-installation was done by YAST, module ndiswrapper.

After installation, it was no problem to change video resolution.

On shutdown, power off didn`t work automatically. Solving this problem, I changed boot-configuration. It's possible to use YAST or directly writing as root into

/boot/grub/menu.lst

I took the direct way:

Delete: acpi=off
Insert: lapic

Save... Ready! Local ACPI work fine. Power off is ok; Functionkeys should also work fine.

My result: Dell Inspirion is a fantastic notebook for working with SuSE 10.

See you! Have fun!

Linux General

Harddrive Partitioning for Linux (inspiron 1300)

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