How to Image Classmate Without Recovery Partition [Archive]

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EHaskins

10-01-2011, 01:48

The imageing disk creates a 5.5gb recovery partition which cannot be used to recover the classmate, and is not used after imaging. Since the Classmate only has a 16gb SSD, it is unreasonable to waste that much space on the SSD.

I have modified the imaging scripts such that they do not create this partition.

NOTE: the following only has a "Works on my Machine (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/03/the-works-on-my-machine-certification-program.html)" garuentee. Make a copy of the imaging flash drive before proceeding.

Replace the AUTOINSTALL.bat and DISKPARTSCRIPT.txt files on your imaging flash drive with the ones contained in the zip file attached to this post.

That is all. Boot your classmate from the flash drive and image as normal, but now you will now have the full 16gb of hdd space available.

Unfortunatly, due to the way they created the partitions the built-in utilites in winodws cannot remove this partition after imaging. It is possible to do remove this partition manually with third party tools after imaging is complete, but I dont' have time to document that procedure now.

BrandonD-1528

10-01-2011, 17:43

It would be recommended to try and remove the partition with a linux netboot or USB boot manually, and expanding the Windows partition, before attempting this method, as modifying the image key is risky.

Edit: Going to duplicate the imaging key on another flash drive and patch it. We have 2 netbooks so testing is an option. I'll report back in a bit.

kinganu123

10-01-2011, 22:47

Tested and confirmed working on our '10 netbook

PatrickS

10-01-2011, 22:57

You can boot to a linux live CD and manually remove the recovery partition. You can use tools such as Gparted or fdisk.

EHaskins

11-01-2011, 00:48

I've tested it, and I've now install all of the manditory updates and Java updates, and everything worked great.

Edit: Going to duplicate the imaging key on another flash drive and patch it. We have 2 netbooks so testing is an option. I'll report back in a bit.

Tested and confirmed working on our '10 netbook

Thanks for the feedback.

It would be recommended to try and remove the partition with a linux netboot or USB boot manually, and expanding the Windows partition, before attempting this method, as modifying the image key is risky.

You can boot to a linux live CD and manually remove the recovery partition. You can use tools such as Gparted or fdisk.

Yes, that is possible, but I believe this is the simpler method if the classmate has not yet been customized. If significant effort has already been expended, then yes, using GParted or a similar tool may be the correct course of action.

BrandonD-1528

11-01-2011, 11:03

This fix is confirmed working by us as well. Removing Open Office will also give some valuable space.

We went from just over 1 GB available to nearly 8.

EHaskins

11-01-2011, 11:05

This fix is confirmed working by us as well. Removing Open Office will also give some valuable space.

We went from just over 1 GB available to nearly 8.

Thanks for the feedback.

BrandonD-1528

11-01-2011, 19:16

Here's a bit of an update: This disk space recovery method is now featured in the KOP Control System section at http://www.usfirst.org/frc/kitofparts as of January 11, 2011.

EHaskins

11-01-2011, 19:26

Here's a bit of an update: This disk space recovery method is now featured in the KOP Control System section at http://www.usfirst.org/frc/kitofparts as of January 11, 2011.

Thanks for the info.

Eric

jason701802

11-01-2011, 20:14

kinganu123

11-01-2011, 20:29

Tested and confirmed by Team 753. We first tried using gParted, but it gave us an error and we were no longer able to boot. We decided to give this a go, backed up the .bat and .txt files, and re-imaged using these files. We are up and running with lots more space, many thanks.

I too tried gParted, and I got the recovery partition to be removed. HOWEVER, I couldn't extend the NTFS partition into the newly unallocated space, rendering this method useless.

EHaskins

12-01-2011, 10:40

I too tried gParted, and I got the recovery partition to be removed. HOWEVER, I couldn't extend the NTFS partition into the newly unallocated space, rendering this method useless.

IIRC, GParted has a move partiton command. It can be used to move a partition to another drive, or like in this case to another location on the same drive. I don't know the name of this command, but most third party partitioning tools should have this functionallity.

Here are the rough steps you will need to do:

Remove the 5,500mb partition.
Move the 100mb and ~10gb partition to the start of the drive.
Expand the ~10gb partition to maximum possible size