Miscellaneous conspiracies notwithstanding, my calculations below indicate that a half percent of your disk is taken up by /dev/sda1. Well known lifestyle changes might compensate for that. $ bc -l bc 1.06.95 Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details type `warranty'. 192/37729 .00508892363964059476
-- Pat On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 09:10:21AM -0800, Michael Moore wrote: > ... > > After some investigating, I figured out that I can get rid of > > /dev/sda3 and I decided what I want to do is reformat and reinstall > ... > > A general rule of thumb for computers. Always have a second copy. > Hard drives are cheap. Most laptops have a way to attach a second > drive (thinkpads use "ultrabay", swappable between CD and floppy > and battery and hard drive tray. With linux, you can use dd (or > ddrescue) to make a bit level copy to a second drive. > > Windoze may complain if you boot from that second drive (windoze > tracks hardware) but even if it won't boot, you still have a > copy of the original bits you can restore to the original disk. > > If you use a model-identical hard drive under Linux, then the > copy drive functions almost identically to the original. This > is good for on-the-road backups. Not sure about grub2 - that > may "helpfully" insist on the same drive ID. > > Hard drives are getting cheaper, so a drive on the shelf is not > a good investment, dollars per gigabyte. But it is an excellent > investment in a quick-swap spare. An identical drive may not be > available next year. > > So, buy a second drive, copy the bits onto it, see how it behaves > used as a replacement (probably usably but poorly under windoze). > Then try removing /dev/sda3 and see what happens; now you can put > it back if it doesn't work. > > Keith > > PS: Lately, in my more paranoid moments, I wonder if these > unexplained partitions are where the Chinese People's Liberation > Army hides their cyber-war logic bombs. Not much hiding, but > Americans don't do much looking. It wouldn't be difficult to > write an app that checksums these partitions, looking for changes > over time or between machines. That would be interesting. > > -- > Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 > KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" > Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > -- [email protected] www.timlick.com 503-476-3119 10990 NE Paren Springs Rd. Dundee OR 97115 _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
