[ALUG] "Hidden partitions"

[Tim Green]

On 2/18/07, Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist at digimatic.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-02-18 at 09:47 +0000, ted.harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > I understand that many laptops have BIOS-admin and
> > diagnostic programs stored in a "hidden partition"
> > on the hard drive -- usually accessed by pressing
> > a function key during the first stage of booting.
> >
> Actually the BIOS admin bit is quite rare these days, I think a few of
> the older Compaq's had that, and my very very old 286 Tosh did.

My very modern Thinkpad still does it!

fdisk shows two partitions with Thinkpad factory reset stored in the
second. To replace Windows with Linux, just re-tag the first partition
as Linux, and run mke2fs on it.

Regards,
Tim.