will Ubuntu screw with my recovery partition?

[gusl]

I am somewhat worried that the Ubuntu installer will either overwrite my WinXP Recovery partition (provided by HP), or put its own bootloader before one gets a chance to hit F11, preventing access to the Recovery Partition. My goal is to triple-boot: frequently boot into (1) Ubuntu and (2) WinXP, and very infrequently into (3) Recovery Partition.

Some claim that F11 is a BIOS feature, and thus safe. Others say that *not* deleting the Recovery Partition can cause boot problems.

Running cfdisk from the Live CD, I see that I have two partitions:
* sda1: NTFS, ~72.5GB
* sda2: W95 FAT32 (LBA), ~7.5GB

I think sda2 is the recovery partition; I find it a bit surprising that it's FAT.

UPDATE: This is exactly what I'm asking for, except that I have an HP, not an Acer. 'meierfra' suggests adding Ubuntu to the Windows bootloader.
Alternatively, 'pumalite' suggests installing grub to the partition, rather than to the MBR, and booting with SuperGrub. (This sounds annoying; imagine going through 2 boot screens every time you restart your machine) But none of this should be necessary if the "F11 Restore" is a BIOS feature, as some people claimed.

Comments

[dachte.livejournal.com]

If you're worried, make a copy of the MBR using "dd". If you're *really* worried, make a copy of the recovery partition, also using dd.

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

The claim that leaving the recovery partition on can cause boot problems appears to me to be lies and bullshit. I can't speak to what you need to preserve for it to remain functional, though.

[alanv]

Ew.
*has an HP laptop with such a partition*
That recovery partition thing is the worst idea ever.

Your laptop probably has a "make recovery DVD disc" feature. I would alternately suggest doing that and then wiping the recovery partition.

Also, if your only concern is to be able to fix/reinstall Windows, you can buy an XP disc from the CMU bookstore for around $40.

[phoenix1701.livejournal.com]

Hm. Sounds like you might have a case for installing Ubuntu via Wubi -- that way, Ubuntu becomes an option in your Windows boot menu, and you don't need a separate partition at all. Disk performance is somewhat affected by this, but in my experimentation with Wubi I never noticed any degradation whatsoever.