[PLUG] EISA partition on Toshiba laptop

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 09:10:21AM -0800, Michael Moore wrote:
...
> After some investigating, I figured out that I can get rid of
> /dev/sda3 and I decided what I want to do is reformat and reinstall
...

A general rule of thumb for computers.  Always have a second copy.
Hard drives are cheap.  Most laptops have a way to attach a second
drive (thinkpads use "ultrabay", swappable between CD and floppy
and battery and hard drive tray.  With linux, you can use dd (or
ddrescue) to make a bit level copy to a second drive. 

Windoze may complain if you boot from that second drive (windoze
tracks hardware) but even if it won't boot,  you still have a
copy of the original bits you can restore to the original disk.

If you use a model-identical hard drive under Linux,  then the
copy drive functions almost identically to the original.  This
is good for on-the-road backups.  Not sure about grub2 - that
may "helpfully" insist on the same drive ID.

Hard drives are getting cheaper, so a drive on the shelf is not
a good investment, dollars per gigabyte.  But it is an excellent
investment in a quick-swap spare.  An identical drive may not be
available next year.

So, buy a second drive, copy the bits onto it, see how it behaves
used as a replacement (probably usably but poorly under windoze). 
Then try removing /dev/sda3 and see what happens; now you can put
it back if it doesn't work.

Keith

PS:  Lately, in my more paranoid moments, I wonder if these
unexplained partitions are where the Chinese People's Liberation
Army hides their cyber-war logic bombs.  Not much hiding, but
Americans don't do much looking.  It wouldn't be difficult to
write an app that checksums these partitions, looking for changes
over time or between machines.  That would be interesting.

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs