Samsung N150 Plus netbook for Windows and Linux

Quick look at the hardware

The N150 Plus comes with 10-inch screen, resolution 250 GB disk, 3 USB ports (one with "permanent" power), Fast Ethernet port, and VGA HD-15 port.

Initial view of the disk

2011-03-25. I first booted into a Linux installation system (it happened to be Fedora 14) and did Ctl-Alt-F2 just to view the layout of the netbook partitions as supplied. Note that Fedora 14 fdisk uses the -u option by default, so Start and End information is in sectors. I then mounted each partition read-only and checked the used space and contents. I then just rebooted without installing a linux system at this stage.

The partitions look like a Recovery Partition on sda1, a boot manager partition of exactly 100 MiB? (sometimes called the BitLocker? partition I think) on sda2, a Windows C drive on sda3, and a D drive on sda4.

# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    41945087    20971520   27  Unknown
/dev/sda2   *    41945088    42149887      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3        42149888   126035967    41943040    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4       126035968   488392703   181178368    7  HPFS/NTFS

# df  --si
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda1               22G    15G   7.1G  68% /tmp/sda1
/dev/sda2              105M    26M    80M  25% /tmp/sda2
/dev/sda3               43G    17G    27G  39% /tmp/sda3
/dev/sda4              186G    96M   186G   1% /tmp/sda4

# ls -l /tmp/sda1
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Jul 28  2009 EFI
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Aug 15  2010 Restore
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Aug 14  2010 System Volume Information
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root       8192 Aug  3  2010 SystemSoftware
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root       8192 Aug  3  2010 WinClon
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Apr 24  2007 WinClon.WCL
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Jul 28  2009 boot
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     383562 Jul 13  2009 bootmgr
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root     481680 Jul 13  2009 imagex.exe
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4292936480 Aug  3  2010 init.w01
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 1835910353 Aug  3  2010 init.w02
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4292991703 Aug  3  2010 init.wcl
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root         25 Aug  3  2010 init.woo
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Sep 21  2009 sources
# ls -l /tmp/sda2
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   4096 Aug  3  2010 BOOT
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root      0 Aug  2  2010 System Volume Information
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 383562 Jul 14  2009 bootmgr
# ls -l /tmp/sda3
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Aug 14  2010 $Recycle.Bin
lrwxrwxrwx. 2 root root         60 Jul 14  2009 Documents and Settings -> /tmp/sda3/Users
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Aug 14  2010 Intel
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root          0 Jul 14  2009 PerfLogs
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root       8192 Aug 14  2010 Program Files
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root       4096 Aug 14  2010 ProgramData
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root       2047 Aug 14  2010 RHDSetup.log
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root      16384 Aug  1  2010 System Volume Information
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root       4096 Jul 14  2009 Users
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root      16384 Dec  3 09:20 Windows
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root         24 Jun 10  2009 autoexec.bat
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root         10 Jun 10  2009 config.sys
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 1062518784 Dec  3 09:19 hiberfil.sys
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 1073741824 Dec  3 09:19 pagefile.sys
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root        159 Aug  1  2010 setup.log
# ls -l /tmp/sda4
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14  2010 $RECYCLE.BIN
drwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Aug 14  2010 System Volume Information

First Windows boot

I then booted the netbook, without a network. The netbook boots into Windows 7 Starter, asks for a few details: language, localisation, name of primary user and computer, initial Windows Update setting, and then goes into an Install process which takes 20 minutes. Then there's a prompt from Easy Partition Manager to choose relative C and D drive sizes. I chose the minimum C: drive size of 40 GB, making the D: drive 172 GB. This operation took about 1 minute, after which Windows was available. As the partition manager recommended a reboot, I did this straightaway. A process then ran called Easy Speed-Up Manager which took a bit over 15 minutes. Looking afterwards, the Partition Manager has converted the C: drive from exactly 40 GiB? to exactly 41 GiB? , which is an odd thing to do after I asked for 40, and the D: drive is 171 GiB? . See next section for sector counts.

Quick look after first Windows boot

Rebooted into a linux installation system again on CD, to see what's happened. The Easy Partition Manager has converted the C: drive from exactly 40 GiB? to exactly 41 GiB? , which is an odd thing to do after I asked for 40, and the D: drive is 171 GiB? . It has conveniently created an extended partition for us at sda4, which contains just one logical partition sda5: the D: drive (which is empty). At a quick glance, again mounting read-only, partition sda1 appears unchanged, partition sda2 now has a BOOT/BCD.LOG file, and partition sda3 as the C: drive has been updated (maybe to include new programs) by the first-boot installation.

# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    41945087    20971520   27  Unknown
/dev/sda2   *    41945088    42149887      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3        42149888   128133119    42991616    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4       128133120   488394751   180130816    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       128135168   488394751   180129792    7  HPFS/NTFS

-- LawrenceLowe - created 25 Mar 2011