Sony should really update their format utility. It's kinda bad - but I guess, for the stock HDD drives it's OK. I would love to make it more open and let the end user configure the partitions even more. I only want ~5 GB Linux partition and ~35 GB HDD space for the PS3 XMB; not the 10GB/30GB alternative...
well, based on what i've been reading, I don't think the main core (the bootloader?) of the other os (linux, or whatever else) is not in the hdd. If it was, then i think it should have been gone with just a reformatting of the hdd allocating all for the ps3.
So I think the question is, is there a way to remove the bootloader without affecting the original ps3 os?