Lenovo A61e and recovert partition

I have a new Lenovo A61e with XP Pro, and I want to set it up dual
boot with Mint 4.0 KDE. The standard partitioning tool that runs as a
part of the desktop install is unable to resize / repartition on the
fly, and I guess this is as a result of a hidden 5Gb recovery
partition - marked as type EISA.

The disk manager in XP can display this partition, but that's it - the
usual options to remove / initialise etc. are missing.

Does anyone have any pointers for managing this? I'd prefer to retain
the XP install and recovery partition if possible, but I'm not certain

On Apr 2, 2:36 am, seani <ingl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a new Lenovo A61e with XP Pro, and I want to set it up dual
> boot with Mint 4.0 KDE. The standard partitioning tool that runs as a
> part of the desktop install is unable to resize / repartition on the
> fly, and I guess this is as a result of a hidden 5Gb recovery
> partition - marked as type EISA.
>
> The disk manager in XP can display this partition, but that's it - the
> usual options to remove / initialise etc. are missing.
>
> Does anyone have any pointers for managing this? I'd prefer to retain
> the XP install and recovery partition if possible, but I'm not certain
> how to safely proceed.

fdisk might do it.
What does fdisk -l   show you?
Did you try just using fdisk to remove that 5Gb partition?
Boot the Mint CD and bring up a terminal and use fdisk
fdisk -l                  [show existing partitions]
fdisk /dev/hda      [start fdisk on primary IDE drive]
         p                [print partitions]
         t                 [change partition type]
         d                [delete a partition]

trryhend@gmail.com wrote:

> On Apr 2, 2:36 am, seani <ingl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have a new Lenovo A61e with XP Pro, and I want to set it up dual
> > boot with Mint 4.0 KDE. The standard partitioning tool that runs as a
> > part of the desktop install is unable to resize / repartition on the
> > fly, and I guess this is as a result of a hidden 5Gb recovery
> > partition - marked as type EISA.
> >
> > The disk manager in XP can display this partition, but that's it -
the
> > usual options to remove / initialise etc. are missing.
> >
> > Does anyone have any pointers for managing this? I'd prefer to retain
> > the XP install and recovery partition if possible, but I'm not
certain
> > how to safely proceed.
>
> fdisk might do it.
> What does fdisk -l   show you?
> Did you try just using fdisk to remove that 5Gb partition?
> Boot the Mint CD and bring up a terminal and use fdisk
> fdisk -l                  [show existing partitions]
> fdisk /dev/hda      [start fdisk on primary IDE drive]
>          p                [print partitions]
>          t                 [change partition type]
>          d                [delete a partition]
>          m               [list commands - help]

Thanks for the response.

I'd considered going down the slash-and-burn route (and I've no doubt
either LiveCD could do the job if I agreed they could take over the
whole disk when prompted) but I *really* want to retain both the
original XP install and the recovery partition if possible.

In the meantime, I've found this:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Pre-Installation_steps