Removing the DELLUTILITY partition

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I am in the process of repartitioning the drive on my laptop so I can
make room for Linux when I notice there's a little invisible partition
at the beginning of the drive labelled DELLUTILITY (DU). Since I'm
planning to dual boot with XP (haven't found a good Linux alternative to
OrCAD PSPICE), I would prefer to have NTFS, FAT32, Ext3, and Ext3 Swap
partitions however you're only able to have 4 primary partitions and DU
is listed as one. Does anyone know what the DU partition is for? Also
is it safe to remove? This is on a Latitude D610 if it matters.
 
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Nicholas Andrade wrote:

> I am in the process of repartitioning the drive on my laptop so I can
> make room for Linux when I notice there's a little invisible partition
> at the beginning of the drive labelled DELLUTILITY (DU). Since I'm
> planning to dual boot with XP (haven't found a good Linux alternative
> to OrCAD PSPICE), I would prefer to have NTFS, FAT32, Ext3, and Ext3
> Swap partitions however you're only able to have 4 primary partitions
> and DU is listed as one. Does anyone know what the DU partition is
> for? Also is it safe to remove? This is on a Latitude D610 if it
> matters.

It is safe to remove. It is the same programs as are on your Dell
utilities disk. Removed mine a long time ago.
 
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Nicholas Andrade wrote:
> I am in the process of repartitioning the drive on my laptop so I can
> make room for Linux when I notice there's a little invisible partition
> at the beginning of the drive labelled DELLUTILITY (DU). Since I'm
> planning to dual boot with XP (haven't found a good Linux alternative to
> OrCAD PSPICE), I would prefer to have NTFS, FAT32, Ext3, and Ext3 Swap
> partitions however you're only able to have 4 primary partitions and DU
> is listed as one. Does anyone know what the DU partition is for? Also
> is it safe to remove? This is on a Latitude D610 if it matters.

4 primary partitions need not be an obstacle, as all your Linux
partitions could be logical partitions. Assuming the FAT32 partition is
there for data interchange, or some other non-boot reason, that could be
a logical partition as well.

So you could have...
DU primary
NTFS (XP) primary
Extended (primary)
FAT32 (?) logical
EXT3 1 logical
EXT3 2 logical
EXT3 n logical
Linux swap logical
 
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Yes, a diagnostic partition. I needed 4 primary partitions too, so mine has
been deleted.

Brian


"Nicholas Andrade" <sdnick484@nospam.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:uiIVd.2311$C47.483@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
>I am in the process of repartitioning the drive on my laptop so I can make
>room for Linux when I notice there's a little invisible partition at the
>beginning of the drive labelled DELLUTILITY (DU). Since I'm planning to
>dual boot with XP (haven't found a good Linux alternative to OrCAD PSPICE),
>I would prefer to have NTFS, FAT32, Ext3, and Ext3 Swap partitions however
>you're only able to have 4 primary partitions and DU is listed as one.
>Does anyone know what the DU partition is for? Also is it safe to remove?
>This is on a Latitude D610 if it matters.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

John Fryatt wrote:
> Nicholas Andrade wrote:
>
>> I am in the process of repartitioning the drive on my laptop so I can
>> make room for Linux when I notice there's a little invisible partition
>> at the beginning of the drive labelled DELLUTILITY (DU). Since I'm
>> planning to dual boot with XP (haven't found a good Linux alternative
>> to OrCAD PSPICE), I would prefer to have NTFS, FAT32, Ext3, and Ext3
>> Swap partitions however you're only able to have 4 primary partitions
>> and DU is listed as one. Does anyone know what the DU partition is
>> for? Also is it safe to remove? This is on a Latitude D610 if it
>> matters.
>
>
> 4 primary partitions need not be an obstacle, as all your Linux
> partitions could be logical partitions. Assuming the FAT32 partition is
> there for data interchange, or some other non-boot reason, that could be
> a logical partition as well.
>
> So you could have...
> DU primary
> NTFS (XP) primary
> Extended (primary)
> FAT32 (?) logical
> EXT3 1 logical
> EXT3 2 logical
> EXT3 n logical
> Linux swap logical

I was under the impression that my root filesystem had to be on a
primary partition, it's good to know it doesn't. I ended going with:

/dev/sda1 DU
/dev/sda2 NTFS
/dev/sda3 Ext3
/dev/sda4 Extended
/dev/sda5 Swap
/dev/sda6 FAT32

As you guessed, I just wanted the FAT partition as my go-between drive.
A couple interesting things I noticed were that the Dell Utitility
partition is FAT32 (I unhid it from Windows with Grub) and can be called
directly from grub with rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1. I was also
surprised to see my drives listed as SDA, not HDA; this is on a D610
with the new Intel Sonoma chipset.

I'd also like to add that Fedora Core 3 runs great on the D610. Only
the Intel 2200 didn't work out of the box, but the drivers from
sourceforge work great. My next small task is setting up direct
rendering for the ATI X300, but the generic drivers work fine.

Adios,
~Nick