Toshiba Satellite M30 multiple partitions

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Recently, I bought a Toshiba notebook (laptop) - Toshiba Satellite
M30-YSJ Centrino Mobile 1.6GHz. It came with a recovery disk and a
hard drive 80 Gbytes big. In such cases I usually make couple of disk
partitions so that I do not become a victim of a malicious virus or
MBR gets corrupted by mistake. In both case likelyhood of loosing
personal data stored on hard drive is high. Toshiba support center
does not provide any suggestions how to do this. In fact, they do not
support multiple partitions!? However, for the end users it is one of
the most wanted features. For those not familiar with what recover
DVD/CD is, it is a bundle of scripts and SW applications that will
automatically start, partition your hard drive with a single partition
and install operating system (in this case Windows XP) and all needed
drivers. Kind of fool-proof installation recepie.

I spent a whole weekend trying to figure out how to make 3 partitions
and finally was able to achieve it. Just to get to BIOS on this laptop
was challenge in itself. Since, it gave that much headaches and I
found workaround without any additional SW, I decided to publish notes
from this activity. Maybe, some of you will find it useful and I will
use it as a reminder when time comes to re-install Windows XP :-( The
whole procedure is broken into steps as follows:
1. Insert CD recover DVD/CD into laptop
2. Completely shutdown laptop (power goes off)
3. Press and hold key “c”
4. Push power button (key “c” is still depressed)
5. You will get 2 options (F2->takes you to BIOS, F12->you can select
startup devices). Still “c” is depressed and select option
F12. Select system to boot from DVD/CD ROM. Release "c".
6. Do not allow system to go on its own, and select option F2, soon
after that you will get DOS prompt.
7. Go to partition Q (virtual DVD/CD device), cd bin; start fdisk
8. Repartition your hard drive using fdisk. Be sure to enable large
disk support. Create one physical partition and set it
“active”. Create extended partition and 2 logical
partitions. Process takes long cause fdisk will verify disk integrity
after each step.
NOTE: When working with fdisk don’t be fooled with max. disk
size reported. Fdisk fails to recognize correct disk size, however I
used % to tell it how big each partition should be.
9. Quit fdisk and at a prompt execute command: “seq –set
4”. Don’t ask why! It will tell system that disk
partitioning is done. Step 4 is over, or something like that.
10. On Q drive under bin directory you will find "format". Use it to
format your newly created partitions.
11. At this point do “reboot” and make sure that system
gets booted from DVD/CD ROM
12. After this your Windows XP will be installed with all needed
drivers. And everything will be exactly the same as if you follow
regular Toshiba procedure, but you will have multiple partitions.

Tip: To get to BIOS on Toshiba Satellite M30-YSJ Centrino Mobile
1.6GHz Notebook you have to turn your laptop completely off, press
“c” and hold it while turning laptop on. At one point you
will get option to enter BIOS (F2). Release "c" only when you are in
BIOS..


References:
http://www.danielmclean.id.au/notebook.html and
http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2002/11/11/toshiba_1905s3...