[PLUG] Restoring the original netbook OS when no media supplied

[Eric House]

This is a rant, a warning, and a request for help.  The help part: any
ideas on how to get Windows 7 Starter onto a netbook for which it's
licensed without buying a disk?

The story: we've been waiting for the "Pinetrail" version of the Atom
to show up in netbooks, and so when Costco started carrying the
Samsung N-150 I snapped one up.  As soon as it arrived I installed
Ubuntu "Netbook Remix".  The installer for that distro doesn't support
LVM and won't let you install without creating a swap partition, so a
minimum of two partitions were required.  Samsung's setup used three,
so I wiped it, figuring I could restore later (after enabling LVM and
freeing up the swap partition), and moved on.

Big mistake.  The device does not ship with any recovery media.
Worse, Samsung doesn't make disks available (doesn't even sell them),
and won't honor the warranty on the device unless it's running the
software it shipped with.  (I didn't ask what happens if you have a
virus that wipes your drive, having already admitted that I'd wiped
mine on-purpose.)  There was nothing in the packaging to tell me I was
losing the warranty -- but that's not really my problem because Costco
has a great return policy. :-)

That said, I'd rather keep the device if I can set it up to dual-boot
to keep the warranty intact.  If not, consider yourselves warned away
from an otherwise excellent product.  I wonder how much Samsung's
saving much by not including recovery media (as, e.g., Acer does on
similar products I've purchased).

Can anybody suggest strategies for restoring?  If, for example, I
could find somebody with an unmolested similar model is it likely that
dd-ing the first few gigs of the HD (where the special boot blocks and
recovery partition lie) would work?

Thanks,

--Eric
-- 
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