240GB Ipod HDD and Bootable Linux Partition?

[darkenvy]

The title kind of says it all but would it be possible to partition the drive and make it bootable like a bootable flash drive while having the second partition of rock-box unharmed? I don't know what the filesystems would have to be but if you could partition part as ext3 that would be awesome

This would be an awesome use of the space!

[saratoga]

You can add a second parition as EXT3 if you want.  Rockbox won't read it though.

[darkenvy]

Yea thats perfectly fine. What about making it bootable? This won't interfere with rockbox? I wouldn't imagine it would.

[torne]

As long as you leave the Apple firmware partition alone (it's partition 1 but it has type "unused" so partitioning tools have a habit of overwriting its data) it's fine. The OF doesn't care about the boot code in the MBR, it's fine to install a Linux bootloader there.

[darkenvy]

Okay so im having a lot of problems partitioning the HDD. I am using gparted and have found that ~80mb hidden partition at the beginning of the drive. It appeared as unpartitioned space. I did not touch this and I resized the ipod partition from the end to allot 20Gigs. Upon finishing I have found that my ipod is not bootable (gives me a connect to itunes message) but when connected to Linux I can mount all my partitions. I cannot mount any partitions in windows or mac.

I have used gparted less than a week ago to resize one of my Linux partitions and I am able to do so without damaging the information on it, but what happened here? Also when I restored the ipod using windows-itunes (so I could install rockbox soon after) I found that itunes didn't just format the partition like I thought it would but the entire disk.

How can I get this done?

[gevaerts]

Use fdisk. Tools like gparted are designed to "help" people, and may therefore be bad for unusual situations.

[torne]

Okay so im having a lot of problems partitioning the HDD. I am using gparted and have found that ~80mb hidden partition at the beginning of the drive. It appeared as unpartitioned space. I did not touch this and I resized the ipod partition from the end to allot 20Gigs. Upon finishing I have found that my ipod is not bootable (gives me a connect to itunes message) but when connected to Linux I can mount all my partitions. I cannot mount any partitions in windows or mac.

Since it knows the first partition is "unpartitioned space" it probably feels justified in zeroing the start sector and size of that partition entry, or perhaps renumbering the existing partitions to be in different slots. Either of these things will break it

Use fdisk to do it manually, as gevaerts said.

[darkenvy]

hmmm console partitioner, how fun

I'll let you know how this goes.

UPDATE: I decided not to proceed. The risk of bricking my firmware was the cause. The linux would be a bonus and I can jsut buy a portable HDD if I really want it. I traded a 6th gen iPod classic for the 5th gen ipod (with my friend) after some bad e-bay experiences. I hate the 6th gen, scrollwheel sucks and the redesign is poor. also doesn't support rockbox

Thanks for your help anyways