[KLUG Members] Multiple OS Installation on Thinkpad laptop

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> I am thinking of installing   FreeBSD, Open BSD and few flavors of Linux
> on thinkpad.
> My thinkpad has XP professional pre-installed on it.  It also uses a
> hidden partition to store diagnostic tools,
> which are required for recovery.
> I would like to keep the IBM diagnostic and tutorial software as well as
> the Burning software as they are
> pretty good and I dont think I can get a rebate for XP after using  for a
> few months.

You can get one when it is new?

> My problem here is that Open BSD and Free BSD both require primary
> partitions.
> It looks like I might run into partition limit imposed by PC Bios.

I'd imagine.

> Other thing : is it possible to write an image from  a partition with  lot
> of free space to another partition with similar space minus the free
> space, where both the partitions are on different disks.
> Any work arounds suggested?

Yes, but I wouldn't be suprised if you couldn't boot from a partition 
created in
such a way - the boot loader might not be able to find the boot image.  I'd
suggest just getting a copy of VMware and running the alternative OSs in
virtual machines unless you are really going to be using them allot. 
Multi-booting is easy to screw up and a real drag to use.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams - http://www.whitemice.org