Help Requested in Choosing a Power Linux Laptop/Notebook with Multimedia.

[Matt Domsch]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 01:22:05PM -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 19:33:19 -0400,
>   max bianco <maximilianbianco at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I haven't tried it again but I used the whole drive on install of
> > fedora originally and again to reinstall, so best guess is its in some
> > sort of built onto the board mechanism, i'd try it again but my gf
> > probably wouldn't appreciate me doing that on purpose a second time
> > just to test a theory. I am pretty sure its built into the MOBO
> > though.
> 
> How did you check that? Drives have a way of reserving space at the end, that
> the installer wouldn't see. Unless you checked for this reserved space
> explicitly, it wouldn't be noticeable.
> For PATA drives you can use the program at:
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/setmax.c
> I don't know if the same feature is available for SATA or SCSI drives,
> but if it is you will need a different tool to check them.

Newest versions of MediaDirect (version 3 and higher IIRC) don't use
the Host Protected Area of the drives anymore.  They use partition
table swizzling code to hide/unhide the MD partition.

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux