[heydrewster]

I recently purchased a new Toshiba Satellite Notebook model #A200-AH3 with 1GB RAM, 120GB hard drive and running pre-installed Vista Home Premium. Full specs can be viewed here:
http://www.toshiba.ca/web/product.gr...7031&part=6473

Generally speaking, my understanding is that most default purchased computers have their hard drives formatted with two partitions: 1) one small hidden recovery partition with an image of your factory defaults and 2) your standard C: drive containing your operating system, programs and data files etc.

It seems my Toshiba has four partitions and I can't seem to figure out what the fourth partition is for. You can view an image of the way my hard drive is partitioned when using Disk Management here:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=4u9qq0g

Disk 0:

Partition 1:
1.46 GB EISA Config (HIDDEN)
- this i believe to be the recovery partition

Partition 2:
96.40 GB NTFS (VISIBLE)
- standard C: drive containing operating system program files and data

Partition 3:
7.29 GB NTFS (VISIBLE)
- D: drive
- at first I could not understand why my notebook came with this partition. When I called Toshiba tech support, they told me it was the recovery partition and I shouldn't do anything with it. This didn't make any sense to me because this partition is visible when viewing through My Computer, is not a hidden partition and also because it seemed much too big to be a recovery partition. Upon further investigation, I found a tech bulletin on their website stating that since I have a bilingual notebook, after choosing English as my primary language, the setup procedures on my computer leaves a blank partition where the unused language was. Please see details here:
http://askiris.toshiba.com/ToshibaTC...200%2018101883
http://askiris.toshiba.com/ToshibaTC...200%2014540662

Partition 4:
6.64 GB (HIDDEN)
- unknown purpose.
Toshiba tech support mumbled something about how it might be used as a cache but he wasn't sure and if I didn't want all these partitions, I should just do a full recovery. This didn't seem very accurate to me nor a very useful response.

Of note, I did not create any extra partitions on my HD and I believe these are the default partitions that came with the notebook from Toshiba. The only things I have done are install a few basic programs like Firefox, Avast anti-virus, and MSN Messenger -all on the C: drive partition. I also uninstalled the trialware that came with the pc ie. MS Office and Norton anti-virus.

Toshiba technical support was quite unhelpful, first with giving inaccurate information about the purpose of the D: drive partition (saying it was the recovery partition) and secondly not being able to explain the purpose of the fourth partition, stating that I should just use the recovery procedure for my notebook. Personally I would prefer to have a better understanding of the purpose of all these partitions before I do something drastic like using the recovery CDs.

My question to you helpful folks are as follows:

1) Does anyone know the purpose of the mystery fourth partition and what it is used for? It is a hidden partition when viewing through My Computer so I know you shouldn't mess with stuff like that, but I was just curious what it was for. Is it something specific with Vista? Most standard configurations I've seen only have a small hidden recovery partition and the rest is your C: drive so I'm curious to its purpose.

2) For the third partition, the D: drive, based on the linked tech support bulletins, I believe this is just a left over partition from the unused language installation. So basically I can do anything with this partition ... it's visibile on my computer so theoretically I can store data files and such here without fear?

3) I know some people like to partition their drives so they can just put data files in one section or do stuff like dual boots. Theoretically I guess can do this with the current set up I have, leaving the Vista OS and program files on the C: drive and using the D: drive for data files or a dual boot operating system. I realize I'd probably have to resize these two partitions for either of these scenarios to work effectively. However, if I just wanted to have just one big C: drive and not the extra D: drive, how do I go about doing that? Do I just delete the D: drive volume and it will automatically merge with the C volume? I know with Vista there are some limited shrinking and expanding abilities with partitions but can it merge these two partitions or do I need to use something like Partition Magic. I know there are various views on partitioning your HD but I'm not really interested in dual boots and I'll be using an external drive for back ups. Would the best scenario for me be to just merge the C and D drives together and what is the easiest way to do this?

Sorry for the long winded thread but I hope this provides everyone with enough information to provides some answers or to correct me if I've made any incorrect assumptions. Thanks in advance for your help!

[DaveA]

Toshiba, Acer, HP and others have elected to use the "D:" drive as the "System Recover" partition. I agree that this is has it's danger, but they are doing it.
So on your machine do NOT mess with the D drive at all. as for the other two partitions I feel are factory screw ups.

7 .?? is NOT to big of a partition as Vista comes on a DVD not a CD, plus all of the factory installed software is there. Most have a 110-25 GIG partition.

So you are missing 1.46 and 6.64, (8.1) Gigs, that is a drop in the old bucket. If you are filling the hard drive above the 70% level I would then start worrying about this 8.1 Gigs.

That said, Toshiba, should help you in getting rid of the unexplained partitions.

There are a couple of other threads going about doing Partitions, check them out and rethink why you want to do this. http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vi...confusion.html

[heydrewster]

Thanks for the clarification Dave! I was looking at that thread you linked prior to this post when I was waffling about whether I wanted to partition my HD with my new computer. I decided it wasn't worth messing with and I wasn't planning on dual booting but then looked at how my HD was partitioned when I had all these questions.

I'd agree that you're correct that the D partition is indeed the recovery partition. It was just weird to me that it was visible and not hidden and showing as empty and writeable on My Computer. Anyways to make a long story short and for others that might encounter the same problem, I ended up doing a system recovery to the factory defaults and all is well. Toshiba seems to have done a weird factory set-up install leaving those strange partitions due to the bilingual set up of my pc which led to blank unuseable space.

After doing the recovery this is what I was left with, which makes much more sense to me:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=4vhdjy8

disk 0:
partition 1: 1.46 GB EISA (hidden)
partition 2: C: 103.68 GB NTSF (visible)
partition 3: 6.68 GB (hidden)

In My Computer, the only visible drive is just the C: drive which seems to be how it should have been in the first place. Thanks again for all the help.

[DaveA]

The 1.46 still should NOT be there as all of my factory set machine have only the two partitions.

[heydrewster]

hmmm weird. i just checked my old xp computer set-up and you're right in that it only has two partitions, a hidden eisa recovery partition and a visible c drive. on another forum, someone mentioned the 1.46 partition on this current vista machine is something that usually holds utilities you can access with bios. it's small and hidden and i don't really understand that kinda stuff so it's probably best to leave well enough alone. it's likely just some hidden government keylogger spying program watching my every move as i download illegal torrents

[dfingas]

Well, I've been wondering the same thing, because I want to dual-boot so I need to delete at least one partition.

The 1.46 GB partition is some sort of a boot partition (type: EISA) - so probably best to leave it.

The large partition can be resized using, for example, GPartEd http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ but make sure you back up your data first. However, a max. of 4 partitions means that you need to delete one!

The hidden, 6.64 GB partition looks like the recovery partition. I suppose you could delete it if you really wanted, after making the recovery DVDs. It'd be nicer to leave it too.

D:, a 7.29 GB partition looks empty on mine, and since it is readable from within Windows I really don't expect they've put something on there. Maybe you're correct about it being left-over after the language-specific install. I know which one I'll be deleting ...

[KorteLeidse]

5/10/07 11.:26am

Hello:

I just registered after reading your account of the mysteries of a laptop I also bought early in September Toshiba Satellite A200 AH3 or something with 120 GB HD, 1GB Memory, Vista Home Premium and plenty of other stuff 90% of it I still have to learn.

I just made a copy of what you call the Recovery Partition
with PARAGON PARTION BACKUP PROFESSIONAL EDITION
(basically the same as the personal edition) on a Double Layer DVD. It has a Dos folder and a backup file(*.pbf) of the recovery partition it is 6 or more GB. I could have slapped the image back on the recovery partition(as it started in Paragon BackUP) but I didn't think it could be useful now. Perhaps I will need it when I loose all partitions?

Then out of curiosity I did the same with the EISA partition made
a backup DVD because a CD will not hold 1.3 GB data; it has DOS on it like the other and three main folders:
NLS, IMAGES and RESOURCES, the last one has a LANG directory but I didn't find anything using Windows Explorer.
I has DOS directories or Files which appear to be hidden
these have various extensions such as: .RUS, .FRE and so on.
Then I started it like I did the other one but just after an
image of a mouse came up and before it got into PARAGON
PARTITION BACKUP I pressed Ctrl-C and it asked me
if I wanted to exit the batch file I answered yes and ended
up in a pretty poor looking Dos window. I gave the DIR command but couldn't read anything flying by then gave the VER command and barely made out that it was Dos version 6.0.
So it it is an EISA partition that starts up in Dos.
Now I am sleepy and it's a good time to go to bed and
perhaps If I have time find out why this is called an
EISA partition tomorrow.

Cheers!

Yours Truly,
KorteLeidse

P.S.

I had my eight hours sleep and went back to make the following
CORRECTIONS:

1. I used PARAGON PARTITION MANAGER to look at the partition and it listed it as follows
Logical Disk No Label Primary File System = Not Formatted Size=1.4 GB Used-2047.9 GB that's riight it's over 2000GB
2. Then I did a first sector check and found out its firs seven bytes were no different from an NTFS partition eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00
in ascii that is: eR.NTFS followed by four spaces (the dot means don't know.)
3. I assigned it a drive letter left partition manager and returned to Windows
Explorer it gave the following information:
More of this later till I get the information in one file.
Basically Windows Explorer sees it as a NTFS volume and it calls the partition
TOSHIBA SYSTEM VOLUME with 1.42 MB used out of 1.32 GB

Cheers,

KorteLeidse

[uhaligani]

In my brief excursion into laptops (My wifes) I had read up on these mainifestations. I boldly wnet where no idiot had been before. I aloowed the Laptop, on initialisation, to install the OS (In this case XP). I customised it, removed the large number of demo programs and generally cleaned up. I made an Acronis image of the final result and then totalled the Hard disk. I repartitioned it to my own satisfaction and cloned my image back to C:
Everything since has run smoothly.

[KorteLeidse]

To Uhaligani:

My only familiarly is with WINDOWS98SE so I am trying to understand how this laptap with VISTA HOME EDITION PREMIUM WORKS so far I am making slow
but steady progress. By the way this forum has a spell checker
which works quite nicely as I have used it plenty of time.

Cheers,

KorteLeidse

[KorteLeidse]

06/10/07 11:19 PM

I learned more about the mystery partition EISA and that
CHANGING PARTITION ATTRIBUTES CAN MAKE THE COMPUTER UNBOOTABLE

Here's what I learned

Below are the contents of partition E: the so called EISA partition.


Name Date modified Type Size
$RECYCLE.BIN 06 10 2007 11:09 AM File Folder

SOURCES 03 10 2007 6:51 AM File Folder
System Volume Information 03 10 2007 6:54 AM File Folder
BOOT.SDI 17 09 2006 11:45 PM SDI File 3,096 KB
WinREPartition.ini 03 10 2007 6:51 AM Configuration Settings 1 KB

Below you can see that the System Volume Information created on the day
I reinstalled to OUT OF THE BOX specifications from the Restore Partition.

System Volume Information Properties
General Sharing Security Customize
System Volume Information
Type: File Folder
Location: E:\
Size: 0 bytes
Size on disk: 0 bytes
Contains: 0 Files, 0 Folders
Created: October- 03- 07, 6:54:00 AM
Attributes: Read-only Hidden

Follows the contents of WinREPartition.ini:

[HDDRecovery]
RecoverySize=6299
[MasterInformation]
MediaInformation=WINDOWS
SoftwareNumber=S3A6134D002
CDNUM=1
CDMAX=1
[Value]
GetManufacture=TOSHIBA
UsingDriveSize=15949389824


SOME RESTORE POINTS OF PARTITION C(The Vista Partition):
You can see that I did a complete reinstall a few days
ago thanks to conflicting antivirus trial versions; not included are programs
installed after AVG anti virus.

Date and Time Description
04/10/2007 3:20:23 PM Install: Installed AVG 7.5
04/10/2007 9:45:31 AM Manual: after vista install 31007 1045a
04/10/2007 9:30:58 AM Install: Device Driver Package Install: TOSHIBA Corp.
04/10/2007 9:30:31 AM Install: Installed TosDVD
04/10/2007 9:29:02 AM Install: Device Driver Package Install: Atheros Communications Inc....
04/10/2007 9:28:46 AM Install: Installed Atheros Driver Installation Program
03/10/2007 11:23:24 AM System: Configured TOSHIBA Value Added Package
03/10/2007 8:18:11 AM Undo: Restore Operation
03/10/2007 8:10:38 AM Install: Windows Modules Installer
03/10/2007 7:01:13 AM Install: Installed reminder
03/10/2007 6:58:48 AM Install: Installed TOSHIBA Value Added Package
03/10/2007 6:58:14 AM Install: Device Driver Package Install: Alps Mice and other pointing ...
03/10/2007 4:25:40 AM Install: Device Driver Package Install: TOSHIBA Corp.
03/10/2007 4:25:20 AM Install: Installed TosDVD
03/10/2007 4:24:15 AM Install: Device Driver Package Install: Agere Modems
03/10/2007 4:23:39 AM Install: Device Driver Package Install: Atheros Communications Inc....
03/10/2007 4:23:26 AM Install: Installed Atheros Driver Installation Program

The first sector of partition C: differs by only 17 bytes from that of partition E:
INTERESTING THING IS I MADE SOME CHANGES TO PARTITION E: PARAMETERS
TURNING ON VISIBLE AND ACTIVE PARTITION MANAGER DID WARN ME THAT THE SYSTEM\ MAY NOT BOOT UP AND SHORE ENOUGH THAT HAPPENED.

THE COMPUTER REFUSES TO BOOT
Apparently although the first sector which contains the boot manager is almost the
same in both partition E: for EISA has no BOOT MANAGER and it is the first active
partition so the system goes to E: and does not look at any others(pressing F12 just showed partition E: and the CD/DVD drive.

PARTITION MANAGER'S RECOVERY DISK TO THE RESCUE
Luckily I have a Paragon Partition Manager Recovery Disk so I booted that up and made partition E: inactive there was no trouble booting then. Later I almost screwed up the partition with WINDOWS EXPLORER since it was visible and Windows Explorer goes all over the place almost deleted a file there so I made the partition invisible two close calls.



DIFFERENCE IN FIRST SECTOR BETWEEN E(ISA): and C(VISTA):
First file name: C:\downloads_f\vista-help\VIV\system\dump from Drive 0 sector 0 (1 sectors).bin
Second file name: C:\downloads_f\vista-help\VIV\system\dump from Drive 1 sector 0 (1 sectors).bin
Summary:

17 : 17 Byte(s) diff 495 Byte(s) match 512 : 512 Byte(s) total

Difference(17) in sector zero between the E(ISA): and C: partition
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————————————————————————
[ 1 ] C:\downloads_f\vista-help\VIV\system\dump from Drive 0 sector 0 (1 sectors).bin 10/06/07,17:36:13 ???
[ 2 ] C:\downloads_f\vista-help\VIV\system\dump from Drive 1 sector 0 (1 sectors).bin 10/06/07,17:33:54 ???

00000000 EB 52 90 4E 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 ëR�NTFS .....

00000010 [ 1 ] * 00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 00 08 00 00 .....ø..?.ÿ.....
00000010 [ 2 ] * 00 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 00 E8 2E 00 .....ø..?.ÿ..è..

00000020 [ 1 ] * 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 FF DF 2E 00 00 00 00 00 ....€.€.ÿß......
00000020 [ 2 ] * 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 FF E7 F5 0C 00 00 00 00 ....€.€.ÿçõ.....

00000030 [ 1 ] * 00 F4 01 00 00 00 00 00 FF ED 02 00 00 00 00 00 .ô......ÿí......
00000030 [ 2 ] * 00 00 0C 00 00 00 00 00 7F 5E CF 00 00 00 00 00 ........^Ï.....

00000040 [ 1 ] * F6 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 B2 01 A9 CA 12 A9 CA C4 ö.......².©Ê.©ÊÄ
00000040 [ 2 ] * F6 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 53 B8 AF 42 FD AF 42 3E ö.......S¸¯Bý¯B>

From here on all the same

00000050 00 00 00 00 FA 33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C FB 68 C0 07 ....ú3ÀŽÐ¼.|ûhÀ.
00000060 1F 1E 68 66 00 CB 88 16 0E 00 66 81 3E 03 00 4E ..hf.ˈ...f�>..N
00000070 54 46 53 75 15 B4 41 BB AA 55 CD 13 72 0C 81 FB TFSu.´A»ªUÍ.r.�û
00000080 55 AA 75 06 F7 C1 01 00 75 03 E9 D2 00 1E 83 EC Uªu.÷Á..u.éÒ..ƒì
00000090 18 68 1A 00 B4 48 8A 16 0E 00 8B F4 16 1F CD 13 .h..´HŠ...‹ô..Í.
000000a0 9F 83 C4 18 9E 58 1F 72 E1 3B 06 0B 00 75 DB A3 ŸƒÄ.žX.rá;...uÛ£
000000b0 0F 00 C1 2E 0F 00 04 1E 5A 33 DB B9 00 20 2B C8 ..Á.....Z3Û¹. +È
000000c0 66 FF 06 11 00 03 16 0F 00 8E C2 FF 06 16 00 E8 fÿ.......ŽÂÿ...è
000000d0 40 00 2B C8 77 EF B8 00 BB CD 1A 66 23 C0 75 2D @.+Èwï¸.»Í.f#Àu-
000000e0 66 81 FB 54 43 50 41 75 24 81 F9 02 01 72 1E 16 f�ûTCPAu$�ù..r..
000000f0 68 07 BB 16 68 70 0E 16 68 09 00 66 53 66 53 66 h.».hp..h..fSfSf
00000100 55 16 16 16 68 B8 01 66 61 0E 07 CD 1A E9 6A 01 U...h¸.fa..Í.éj.
00000110 90 90 66 60 1E 06 66 A1 11 00 66 03 06 1C 00 1E ��f`..f¡..f.....
00000120 66 68 00 00 00 00 66 50 06 53 68 01 00 68 10 00 fh....fP.Sh..h..
00000130 B4 42 8A 16 0E 00 16 1F 8B F4 CD 13 66 59 5B 5A ´BŠ.....‹ôÍ.fY[Z
00000140 66 59 66 59 1F 0F 82 16 00 66 FF 06 11 00 03 16 fYfY..‚..fÿ.....
00000150 0F 00 8E C2 FF 0E 16 00 75 BC 07 1F 66 61 C3 A0 ..ŽÂÿ...u¼..faÃ
00000160 F8 01 E8 08 00 A0 FB 01 E8 02 00 EB FE B4 01 8B ø.è.. û.è..ëþ´.‹
00000170 F0 AC 3C 00 74 09 B4 0E BB 07 00 CD 10 EB F2 C3 ð¬<.t.´.»..Í.ëòÃ
00000180 0D 0A 41 20 64 69 73 6B 20 72 65 61 64 20 65 72 ..A disk read er
00000190 72 6F 72 20 6F 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 0D 0A 42 ror occurred...B
000001a0 4F 4F 54 4D 47 52 20 69 73 20 6D 69 73 73 69 6E OOTMGR is missin
000001b0 67 00 0D 0A 42 4F 4F 54 4D 47 52 20 69 73 20 63 g...BOOTMGR is c
000001c0 6F 6D 70 72 65 73 73 65 64 00 0D 0A 50 72 65 73 ompressed...Pres
000001d0 73 20 43 74 72 6C 2B 41 6C 74 2B 44 65 6C 20 74 s Ctrl+Alt+Del t
000001e0 6F 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0D 0A 00 00 00 00 00 o restart.......
000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 9D B2 CA 00 00 55 AA ........€�²Ê..Uª



Cheers,

KorteLeidse
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————————————————————————

[Pasgal]

Hi heydrewster,

Although I don't have the exact same model (I got a Satellite U300), Toshiba seems to use the same setup on all its laptop, so maybe this explanation will help.

The firt drive partition (EISA 1.4 GB) is the Toshiba System Volume and is necessary to boot in Recovery mode. You then have your C: drive (Windows System) and two partitions (D: and a hidden one).

The D: drive is supposedly empty and contained the alternate language for the OS that you did not pick-up at first boot. It was deleted then. YOU CAN SAFELY USE OR MERGE THAT PARTITION WITH YOUR C: PARTITION.

The hidden partition contains the chosen language recovery files for what Toshiba calls a HDD Recovery. If you've created a DVD/CD Recovery set, I believe you can safely delete this partition and extend the C: (or D drive partition from within Windows Disk Manager, as the Recovery files are on the CDs/DVDs.

That leaves only the EISA partition. As suggested by Uhaligani, you might use a partition image software to image your C: drive and reformat the whole HD, but you need to have somekind of boot CD with a partition tool for this, which can create a proper boot record for Windows Vista (apparently, there are some differences between Vista and previous Win versions on this, but I don't have the info). SIMPLY DELETING THIS PARTITION WILL PREVENT THE COMPUTER TO BOOT FROM THE HDD, AS YOU'LL ALSO CLEAR THE MASTER BOOT RECORD! Unless you have a retail CD of Windows Vista, you won't be able to easily remount the drive in a usable state and Toshiba Support won't help you.

Personally, I would leave the EISA partition alone for now and merge the three others. Use the CD/DVD set for disaster recovery. Find a good drive image software (Acronis TrueImage is excellent, inexpensive and Vista-compatible) to backup the whole C: partition once arranged as you like and use this image as your primary recovery disk.

Hope this helps!
PG

[KorteLeidse]

23/10/07 843pm

Hello heydrewster:

Regarding Pasgal's reply:

TO USE MORE THAN ONE OS.
I would keep both partitions unless you really need an extra primary partition
for Ubuntu or other Linux OS in which case you might try to do without the
'TOSHIBA RECOVERY PARTITION', 'EISA' or both.

TOSHIBA HDD RECOVERY PARTITION SAVES TIME.
Normally to do a full out of the box recovery hold down the zero key next to the '9' key
as you restart the system so you don't need a TOSHIBA RECOVERY DISC
as the Toshiba laptop uses the HDD's TOSHIBA RECOVERY PARTITION.

THE TOSHIBA RECOVERY DISK ONLY USED BRIEFLY
I have created and used a TOSHIBA RECOVERY DISC now and then
when the Toshiba laptop starts from one it has as far as I recollect
spent ten minutes using the DVD disk and then switched to the HDD and
then spent two and a half hours to do an 'out of the box recovery.'

DELETED THE WHOLE TOSHIBA A 200 HDD
Today I made the mistake of choosing the next to last of the
two 'DELETE ALL DATA' choices while starting another
full system out of the box recovery.
The next screen told me that it would erase all my saved data,
I didn't care because all my data including program files
are on a separate partition I copy these to a
DVD before doing an 'out of the box' recovery.
Unfortunately 'erase all data' meant the whole hard drive including
EISA, RECOVERY PARTITION and all other PARTITIONS.

WITHOUT THE RECOVERY PARTITION
RECOVERY TAKES LONGER
So I used one the TOSHIBA RECOVERY DISKS that
I have created this time it took at least one hour
of using the RECOVER DISC instead of ten minutes,
because the RECOVERY PARTITION was not
on the HDD so after more than an hour
the usual 2 1/2 hours more were
required fpr a complete 'out of the box' recovery.
The full out of the box recovery took at least an hour more
on my TOSHIBA A200 laptop than it usually did.
More than four hours instead of about two and a half
when the HDD has a TOSHIBA RECOVERY PARTITION.

THE EISA PARTITION IS RECREATED
After the out of the box recovery on
checking the HDD I found that the EISA partition
was recreated but not the
RECOVERY PARTITION as the EISA partition is required apparently.

THE C (OS) PARTITION IS DYNAMIC
The C partition is dynamic its Master Boot Record changes
while the OS is used so perhaps the MBR is stored in the EISA one?

PARAGON PARTITION BACKUP VS TRUE IMAGE ACRONIS
My PARAGON PARTITION MANAGER can not back up C:
unlike apparently 'True Image' from 'Acronis.' Acronis
will let you use a fifteen day free trial but you better have
a fast connection.
My connection a dial up stopped and
resumed five times over night and then when it reached
85% of a 136 MB load it did not resume. Their
support refused to let me resume that download.

I am still looking for back up software that
is try before you buy.

Cheers,

KorteLeidse

[ash143gupta]

I am facing problems in installing Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and any

other Linux operating system on my Toshiba Satellite M200 notebook which was

shipped with Windows Vista Home Basic.

All version on Windows Vista can be installed on it ie Vista Ultimate or Windows

Server 2008 beta ie the versions having Vista Engine.

When i install XP it cant find out my Harddiskdrive and same is the case with

Windows Server 2003 and other Microsoft Operating Systems.

I m having an invisible EISA partition on my hdd having a size of 1.46GB. I think the

problem could be because of this partition.

Specification of my laptop are:-
Toshiba Satellite M200
Processor: Intel core 2 duo T7100
RAM:-2GB....

Please Please anybody help my life is pathetic here.I m unable to do anything.

Thanks in advance

[ash143gupta]

I am facing same problems in installing Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and any

other Linux operating system on my Toshiba Satellite M200 notebook which was

shipped with Windows Vista Home Basic.

All version on Windows Vista can be installed on it ie Vista Ultimate or Windows

Server 2008 beta ie the versions having Vista Engine.

When i install XP it cant find out my Harddiskdrive and same is the case with

Windows Server 2003 and other Microsoft Operating Systems.

I m having an invisible EISA partition on my hdd having a size of 1.46GB. I think the

problem could be because of this partition.

Specification of my laptop are:-
Toshiba Satellite M200
Processor: Intel core 2 duo T7100
RAM:-2GB....

Please Please anybody help my life is pathetic here.I m unable to do anything.

Thanks in advance

[t0pcat0704]

My new Acer Aspire 5720 has a 160Gb drive, but is partioned into 2 drives (C: & D of 69.7Gb each. any reason for this?