[PLUG] EISA partition on Toshiba laptop

[Patrick J. Timlick]

Miscellaneous conspiracies notwithstanding, my calculations below indicate
that a half percent of your disk is taken up by /dev/sda1.  Well known
lifestyle changes might compensate for that.
$ bc -l
bc 1.06.95
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation,
Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
192/37729
.00508892363964059476


-- Pat

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

> 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
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-- 
p.j.timlick at ieee.org
www.timlick.com
503-476-3119
10990 NE Paren Springs Rd.
Dundee OR 97115