dual/tri boot with windows

paradisiac

paradisiac

paradisiac

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hi, i have read stuff on google and there seems to be several ways of multi booting windows and linux. i attempted the 'run both windows and linux side by side' option when installing linux, but that took out the windows bootloader so it only booted into linux. has anyone got any easy step by step instructions (or point me to a good site) so i dont have to keep plugging in external drives.

cheers.
 
Do you need to boot into linux? Virtual machines would be much easier to manage and quicker to switch from one to another. You could have several running at once with the amount of memory you have.
 
dekez said:
Do you need to boot into linux? Virtual machines would be much easier to manage and quicker to switch from one to another. You could have several running at once with the amount of memory you have.
Click to expand...

its going on my laptop not my desktop :( i find linux very usful at work as we get in a lot of corrupt hard drives that windows wont read, but linux seems to fine.
 
Ah ok, not sure I can help then I'm afraid, it's been a while since I dual booted, but I seem to remember that the grub boot loader gave me the choice to boot into linux or windows straight after installing.
 
ok. i have a 500GB HDD, i want something like 120GB for windows, 120GB for linux and 250GB for DATA. is that going to be easy to do?
i will be doing a fresh install of both windows and linux.
 
I don't see any problem with that, if you google how to dual boot windows and linux there are plently of guides. So long as you install windows first the linux GRUB bootloader should recognise it and give you the option to boot into it. What distro are you using?
 
This looks like a good guide:
http://techhamlet.com/2010/05/how-to-install-ubuntu-10-04/

I really hate this "Install Linux inside windows" business!!, how very stupid of an option is that! I'm guessing your playing with Ubuntu, because that is where I've seen that option! It's stupid because so so so much can go wrong.

As a Long term Linux user I would recommend only VM installation of Windows! [maybe you want to put linux in a VM in windows] You can plug a Hard Drive into the VM and try to Mount it in the Linux VM under windows (limiting hardware acceleration and native graphic drivers etc...), but your case may be different...? [... and yes your laptop can hack it] If you want to play games, your stuffed and you have to dual boot, wine is getting better for playing games on linux, but still sucks! (I say this because your coming over from windows and your just used to games running perfectly well on full FPS etc...)

If you go for an installation (dual boot), I would suggest - you need to understand 120GB for windows is an overkill, as is 120GB for Linux, and that, the 250 GB for data..... your not going to be able to use this under both operating systems, trouble is NTFS security descriptors, and NTFS is largely proprietary tech..., writing, reading etc... etc..., it's not a viable option, and no don't listen to anyone who says download NTFS drivers in Ubuntu and it works! their wrong and you risk loosing your data at some point!, it happened to me 5 years ago, maybe drivers are better now ... don't know, but I would still feel dirty writing to NTFS from linux... yuk!

You sound like a windows user, using linux

Partitions:
Code: 
Size        MountPoint         Description
20GB       /                       Ubuntu root partiton [OTT: but I dnt know ubuntu is somewhat bloated]

4GB        swap                 Depends.... on your ram and what you want to do, rule is 1...2 times ram, but I have mine set to 2x cause I use memory intensive programs, you can always create a swap file later on /home and extend this, i.g I have 8GB fixed swap and I swap on 20GB when and if I need it to make 28GB swap space --- ridiculous I know by I use MATLAB, and MATLAB allocates memory contiguously !

100GB     /home                Your linux files

Make the above partitions ext4, excepts swap (its just type swap), it just works, not here to argue with anyone about XFS blah blah...

[This setup is ideal, Ubuntu is stupid for not advocating the above, because if '/' gets corrupted, then you can reinstall without harming your files in '/home'

120GB     -                       NTFS Windows
this leaves 250GB you can do with what you want.

What do you want to use this for: if its music and video then that's fine for mounting in Linux and windows (read access only), make another 250GB NTFS partition. If you want somewhere to swap files between linux and windows (that means reading and writing) make a fat partition of 10GB (you will be restricted to file sizes of 2GB, can get away with compressing larger files, i.e. self extracting multiple file rar files, e.g. a 5GB file spread over 10 500 meg file)

or you can divide the 250GB between windows and linux.

The idea is usually to install Windows, and then install Ubuntu, because Grub (linux boot loader) is typically much much better to rescue etc..., and Ubuntu spoon feeds and detect your windows and makes you a grub entry...

If your really giddy about linux and competent then may I suggest playing with the big boys, i.e. Arch or Genoo :-)


--- ok maybe not Ubuntu :-)
 
Last edited:
inSilica said:
This looks like a good guide:
http://techhamlet.com/2010/05/how-to-install-ubuntu-10-04/

I really hate this "Install Linux inside windows" business!!, how very stupid of an option is that! I'm guessing your playing with Ubuntu, because that is where I've seen that option! It's stupid because so so so much can go wrong.

As a Long term Linux user I would recommend only VM installation of Windows! [maybe you want to put linux in a VM in windows] You can plug a Hard Drive into the VM and try to Mount it in the Linux VM under windows (limiting hardware acceleration and native graphic drivers etc...), but your case may be different...? [... and yes your laptop can hack it] If you want to play games, your stuffed and you have to dual boot, wine is getting better for playing games on linux, but still sucks! (I say this because your coming over from windows and your just used to games running perfectly well on full FPS etc...)

If you go for an installation (dual boot), I would suggest - you need to understand 120GB for windows is an overkill, as is 120GB for Linux, and that, the 250 GB for data..... your not going to be able to use this under both operating systems, trouble is NTFS security descriptors, and NTFS is largely proprietary tech..., writing, reading etc... etc..., it's not a viable option, and no don't listen to anyone who says download NTFS drivers in Ubuntu and it works! their wrong and you risk loosing your data at some point!, it happened to me 5 years ago, maybe drivers are better now ... don't know, but I would still feel dirty writing to NTFS from linux... yuk!

You sound like a windows user, using linux

Partitions:
Code: 
Size        MountPoint         Description
20GB       /                       Ubuntu root partiton [OTT: but I dnt know ubuntu is somewhat bloated]

4GB        swap                 Depends.... on your ram and what you want to do, rule is 1...2 times ram, but I have mine set to 2x cause I use memory intensive programs, you can always create a swap file later on /home and extend this, i.g I have 8GB fixed swap and I swap on 20GB when and if I need it to make 28GB swap space --- ridiculous I know by I use MATLAB, and MATLAB allocates memory contiguously !

100GB     /home                Your linux files

Make the above partitions ext4, excepts swap (its just type swap), it just works, not here to argue with anyone about XFS blah blah...

[This setup is ideal, Ubuntu is stupid for not advocating the above, because if '/' gets corrupted, then you can reinstall without harming your files in '/home'

120GB     -                       NTFS Windows
this leaves 250GB you can do with what you want.

What do you want to use this for: if its music and video then that's fine for mounting in Linux and windows (read access only), make another 250GB NTFS partition. If you want somewhere to swap files between linux and windows (that means reading and writing) make a fat partition of 10GB (you will be restricted to file sizes of 2GB, can get away with compressing larger files, i.e. self extracting multiple file rar files, e.g. a 5GB file spread over 10 500 meg file)

or you can divide the 250GB between windows and linux.

The idea is usually to install Windows, and then install Ubuntu, because Grub (linux boot loader) is typically much much better to rescue etc..., and Ubuntu spoon feeds and detect your windows and makes you a grub entry...

If your really giddy about linux and competent then may I suggest playing with the big boys, i.e. Arch or Genoo :-)


--- ok maybe not Ubuntu :-)
Click to expand...

yeh i basically want the data partition to just include pics, music, vids etc not usable files.
i need a reasonable windows partition as i use a lot of software at work, and its also my home laptop to need the stuff i use for that too. the 120GB linux partition would be for the OS, swap file and user/home so i think 120GB will be fine. most of my music etc are stored on my desktop so i can access those when im at home, just want some space i can dump some on so i can use them at work.
did try ubuntu, but am more settled on mint and mandriva, really not sure which i prefer at the moment which is a pain. mandriva looks nicer but mint seems to have a lot more options/features.
 
ok, well that seemed to go ok, i think.
installed windows 7 (120GB), installed mandriva (30GB OS, 9GB swap, 35GB /home) and the rest for data. windows 7 shows up in the bootloader now :) so just waiting for mandriva to do all its updates so i can see if windows 7 will load.
 
yup all is good, so far.....
both windows and linux seem to be running fine side by side, windows 7 is doing sp1 update now though, and from what i have read on google this can take out the grub bootloader :( fingers crossed.
 
For what it's worth, SP1 did not touch my bootloader.

Why did you reinstall Windows? The partition would still have been there, it was just the bootloader that you lost before. Ah well, too late now.

As for what happened in the first place, I'm not sure how you lost your Windows boot option. 99% of the time a Linux distro will detect Windows and configure the bootloader accordingly. Perhaps you just got unlucky.
 
Huw said:
For what it's worth, SP1 did not touch my bootloader.

Why did you reinstall Windows? The partition would still have been there, it was just the bootloader that you lost before. Ah well, too late now.

As for what happened in the first place, I'm not sure how you lost your Windows boot option. 99% of the time a Linux distro will detect Windows and configure the bootloader accordingly. Perhaps you just got unlucky.
Click to expand...

this is a different hard drive. the one that messed up was on an old drive i had laying around so i used it to test. didnt want to use the original HDD that came with the laptop as that has all the recovery partitions and all on, which i want to keep incase i sell it, so stuck in a new 500GB drive for a fresh start.

so far all is well, i might of not read through the options properly first time a missed a tick box or something.
 
ok, everything is good. both mandriva and windows 7 seem to be running after all the updates. now, i have installed the MS fonts on mandriva, but cant seem to work out what looks right on firefox. does anyone have any suggestions on what font is the clearest to use. is there a reason why firefox on linux doesnt display like it does in windows, not just the font, but some page layouts dont work in the linux version either.
 
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