So what do you want to end up with on the HD? Windows recovery
partition + windows xp + linux, or windows xp + linux, or windows
recovery partition + linux, or just linux? It's not 100% clear from
your description. It sounds like you want to keep Windows so you're
looking at one of the first two. And you care about the contents of
the recovery partition, so it may just be the first. If so, just let
your install shrink the Windows partition (not the recovery partition)
and have your linux distro create a partition in the freed space and
target the new partition for its install.
Does your partitioner see the recovery partition? If so, everything
should just work. If the partition table instead appears as "corrupt"
then you might need to manually partition things yourself, but
anything current should be smart enough to deal with recovery
partitions. Have Grub (or LiLo if that's your thing) install into the
mbr and update your grub.conf (or equivalent) to clearly label the
rescue partition in the boot menu.
If you really just want to make recovery media from the rescue
partition then you are probably making this far too hard on yourself.
You say you're on a Thinkpad. It's probably using Thinkpad's Rescue
and Recovery layout and tools. Have you tried simply creating restore
media using the Rescue and Recovery tools? Once that's done you can
boot from that to perform your recovery with the provided drivers,
etc.
~ Daniel
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