thinkpad R40 freebsd preperation questions...

[Jev]

Hi All,

I'm awaiting delivery of a IBM ThinkPad R40 2722, and I have a few 
questions in preparation for installing FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE.

The unit is going to come with WinXP PRO pre-installed, I wish to run 
both XP FreeBSD. I have read about IBM's "recovery partition" and I 
understand that I need to delete the main XP partition and create a new 
smaller partition for XP.

I have only heard of people using partition magic to do this, can I do 
this with fdisk, or other?

Does this partition have to be FAT32 or can I use NTFS?

After I reinstall XP on the newly created partition, I install FreeBSD, 
is it safe to install the freebsd boot manager just like one would on a 
normal pc, or will this disrupt IBM's hidden recovery partitions or 
other hidden things on the hard disk?



One not so tech question (and, a XP question at that!! :), From what I 
have read on this and other lists, Thinkpads don't ship with a 
re-installation disk for XP, they have the "Recovery Partition" instead. 
It is my understanding that If I request the re-installation disk from 
IBM within the first 30 days I will get it free. Has anyone had success 
with getting their reinstall CDs with out extra charge from IBM?


Thanks,
-Jev