For your information, I have a quite similar problem on a TOSHIBA Satellite U840 on which I would like to set up a dual boot Windows 7 / Suse Linux 12.2
Here is a detailed account of what I found:
fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x01e22e81
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 3074047 1536000 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2 3074048 946800639 471863296 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 946802688 976762879 14980096 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sdb: 32.0 GB, 32017047552 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3892 cylinders, total 62533296 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
Disk identifier: 0xa1c391df
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 23521279 11759616 84 OS/2 hidden C: drive
Disk /dev/sdc: 8004 MB, 8004304896 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7633 cylinders, total 15633408 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
Disk identifier: 0x44e5d832
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 64 9119743 4559840 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
(sdc is the openSUSE-12.2-DVD-x86_64.iso installation disk on a USB key)
Now what happens when I start the installation process:
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Language : English [if I select another language at this point, the computer appears to download a translation of the license agreement]; Keyboard layout : French.</li>
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You are running on the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager compatible platform. Following MD compatible RAID devices were detected: 82AT5921V3UGUNV4 SSDSpace cache_vol If they are clean devices or contain partitions the you can choose to use MD partitionable RAID sysbsystem to handle them. In case of clean device you will be able to install system on it and boot from such RAID. Do you want MD Partitionable RAID subsystem to manage those partitions?– YES
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The partition on disk /dev/sda is not readable by the partitioning tool parted, which is used to change the partition table. You can use the partitions on disk /dev/sda as they are. You can format them and assign mount points to them, but you cannot add, edit, resize, or remove partitions from that disk with this tool.–OK
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The partition on disk /dev/sdb is not readable by the partitioning tool parted, which is used to change the partition table. You can use the partitions on disk /dev/sda as they are. You can format them and assign mount points to them, but you cannot add, edit, resize, or remove partitions from that disk with this tool.– OK
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New Installation ; Use Automatic Configuration.
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Region : Europe ; Time Zone : France ; Hardware clock set to UTC
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KDE desktop
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Partitioning: no options ; Create Partition Setup
Select disk 1 (495GB)**ERROR** Operation not permitted on disk /dev/sda ! The partitioning on your disk /dev/sda is either not readable or not supported by the partitioning tool parted used to change the partition table. You can use the partitions on disk /dev/sda as they are or format them and assign mount points, but you cannot add, edit, resize, or remove partitions from that disk here. You initialize the disk partition table to a sane state in the Expert Partitioner by selecting "Expert" -> "Create New Partition Table", but this will destroy all data on all partitions of this disk.
– ABORT
In Windows, I can shrink sda2 to less than half and create a new partition, but the installation process does not see this (logical) partition.
I have made the recommanded recovery media in Windows, so I feel rather safe, but I am greatly in doubt about how to proceed.