You are not logged in.
Hi folks,
I just got myself a brand new Thinkpad edge and I'd like to have Win8/Arch as a dual boot system (primarily using arch of course)
The hard disk situation however is pretty complicated.... and I'm really curious how other thinkpad users managed that.
1. There's a 16GB SSD installed with two partitions, one is for ExpressCache and one for Intel Rapid Start (Why would I want to use that if I can suspend to RAM or disk already?).
-Should I disable both and just install my linux system FS there (should be enough for the system files for me)?
-Or should I try to utilize it in Linux for something like FlashCache? Which possibility will give me more performance?
2. The main HDD comes in 4 Partitions: 1000MB recovery / 260 MB EFI, 450 GB primary / 10 GB recovery
-I'd like one big data partition accessible by both OSes, preferrably in EXT4 (since ntfs-3g still seems to be rather demanding)
-One 50 GB Windows (+Programs) partition
-One 30 GB Linux system partition
-A temp partition
-Now it seems that in windows I can only shrink the primary partition by 50% MAX. Is that some limitation of windows or is it because of the last recovery partition?
-I don't really want to destroy my recovery partition just like that... after all that's the only place where I can get my licensed windows 8 back from. But I might have to, to be able to freely resize my primary partition right? Can I just create a bootable USB stick with the recovery data as detailled here in win8 too: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. … MIGR-74246 and then get rid of it?
Thanks for the input!
Last edited by Zoranthus (2013-04-27 07:30:08)
Offline
Ext4, as far as I know, is still incompatible with windows. Ext 2 can be used by windows, but then you loose journaling and such. If you had to go with a non journaling fs, I'd recommend exfat for the two.
I would wipe the whole hdd and go from there. You should be able to just use the windows key in a fresh install. The key would be on a licensing sticker on the bottom of the computer.
I think Windows can shrink that, then just shrink it again.
Those are my thoughts, but you probably should get a good amount of input from many people. See if some recommendations agree.
Offline
Hi, thanks for the input. I shrank the windows partition with a gparted live stick to 75 GB (the no-less-than-half constraint just seems to be a limitation of windows' own partitioning program) now and then just created linux and data partition with ext4 FS (windows can access ext4 with http://www.ext2fsd.com/ ) between the windows- and the recovery partition. Thanks to the beginner's guide I could setup a nice dual boot system in the new UEFI world, which looked pretty intimidating at first. Next, I'm going to give flashcache a try.
Offline