I have 3 hard drives: one with vista installed on it working fine, one with 10.04 installed on it and working fine and the last is just a media storage drive. Currently I have been unplugging the windows or ubuntu drive depending on which OS I want to boot. What do I need to do so that I don't have to physically disconnect the drives and can just pick which OS to boot on power up?
View 3 Repliesi'm tying to dual boot Vista64 (already installed) and Fedora 10 x86_64. I am running a Dell XPS 410 running 2 sata hard drives raid 0 (ICH8DH). I started the process by shrinking my C drive on disk0 leaving 64.45GB of unallocated space. Next I rebooted into Fedora install DVD and when i get to blue graphical install screen i get message asking if my drive is GPT and if it is it may be corrupted. I click NO, and it comes up with a message telling me i have to initialize my drive if i want to use it ( have to click NO twice) and if i do it i will lose all my data.
i can click no and keep proceding through the install until i get to the partition setup screen. No hard drives or partitions are shown. I've tried googling the problem and get bits of pieces of information scattered in different parts but nothing conclusive to my problem i think. As far as my background of knowledge goes, I'm new to the linux community but give me a thorough guide and i'll do fine (i hope). I've been using fedora on a separate laptop for 2 days now .
I need a suggestion on setting up a dual boot menu for my setup. I have two hard drives one with WinXP and a second one with CentOS 5.3 installed. I basically moved the hard drive from another identical machine to this one and so I want to setup a boot menu to access either windows or Linux. CentOS already has grub on it.
What is the simplest method of setting up the dual boot menu? I would like something which is easy to administer which I can just ghost over either the Linux drive or Windows drive or disconnect either and have either boot just fine. I don't ask for much do I?
If I have to go through a little process after ghosting over one or the other drives that would probably be ok. We get updated images for this machine and replace the image on the drives with new images, although Linux shouldn't be reimaged, just windows. So the Linux drive (2nd drive) should not be touched normally.
I 'm currently using grub to dual boot Windows Vista and Ubuntu 10.10.These are some of my partitions:
- one NTFS partition for Vista
- one NTFS partition for my Vista Data (shared with Ubuntu)
- one ext3 partition for Ubuntu (mounted at /)
- one very large ext3 partition for my Ubuntu home folder (mounted at /home)
I would now like to add Windows XP to this setup, but I am not sure where to start.I know I need to somehow shrink the large ext3 partition so I have an extra partition for XP, which should be NTFS.Then I assume I need to install XP on this partition, and somehow make XP appear in grub.how to do these things. Can anyone help? Please keep the instructions very basic, do not assume that I know anything.
I have a laptop running windows vista already and I need to run Red Hat 7.2/7.3 or Fedora Core 1 on there as well. I am in the process of downloading Red Hat 7.3. I haven't done this before so I'm wondering if there are any guides out there that detail how to set this up to dual boot? Is Red Hat 7.3 a better option over Fedora Core 1?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have always use dual-booting vista--ubuntu, I am getting bit tired of windows, so I want to install ubuntu, specially lucid is coming soon. I want to have the possibility to install windows in case I will need it in the future, like working with Visual Studio, ubuntu always detect if windows is installed, if windows is installed first, does windows also detect if ubuntu is installed ?
View 8 Replies View RelatedUsually I have no problems with linux but with fedora it didnt automatically set up the dual boot with vista. I cant remember how to set up grub to boot vista, how to set this up.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI want to set up grub for a dual boot system of xp and vista. The thing is that I have vista installed and would have to install it ance again after setting up XP in order to use the microsoft bootloader. And secondly I slowly want to get into linux...
This is how I tried it: I have four partitions on my HD and want to install the Bootloader on /dev/sda3. I started up the ubuntu live cd, mounted partition3, opened the console and tried this command line which I found in a tutorial
grub-install --root-directory=/media/hda3 --recheck /dev/hda However I get the following error message:
mkdir: cannot create directory '/media/hda3/boot': No such file or directory
this may be a very stupid question, but. My computer has two hard drives. One has Windows XP installed on it. The other is blank.
Is it possible for me to install Ubuntu onto the second hard drive, and run a dual-boot using GRUB during startup? Or does it only work when both OSs are on the same hard drive?
I would like to install Ubuntu 10.04 on my new 1 TB hard drive. I currently have Windows XP installed on a 160 GB hard drive for things that I cannot do on Ubuntu. I would like to know if it's possible to install the other hard drive, and then dual boot Windows with it? Effectively dual booting across two hard drives. I wouldn't care if GRUB replaces the standard Windows bootloader, just as long as I can choose between the two at startup
View 9 Replies View RelatedI just started working with Linux over the weekend. I do have a working dual booting system but it's not configured exactly how I want it to be. Currently Windows 7 Ultimate and Ubuntu are on the same hard drive but different partitions. The Windows boot screen comes up and I can select Windows or Ubuntu fine. Grub comes up when I select Ubuntu and I can successfully select any choice in the menu and it will run properly.
Everything works great now so you may wonder why I even want to keep tinkering, well, it's not working how I want it to. This is what I want it to do. I want Windows 7 on disk 0 and Ubuntu on disk 1. I want each OS to have it's own hard drive. I want Grub to be the only boot loader that comes up with the option to select Ubuntu or Windows. I want to skip the window's OS selection screen all together. I can modify Grub, I've already done some of that on my work computer.
I've been installing from windows. Should I use a CD instead? Would that accomplish my goals without doing anything special?
I have the following PC set up:
Dell 8400 with 3 GB of RAM with 3 160 GB SATA drives:
The first one has Windows XP installed on it.
The second one has been newly formatted and Ubuntu 10.04 has just been installed on it (20 GB / and 6 GB swap) with grub being installed on the first partition and not the master boot record. The remainder will be for storage for Windows.
The third drive is simply storage for Windows.
At this point I am able to boot XP just fine, but I'm not able to boot Linux. I just getting a blinking cursor or the PC just reboots when I choose Linux. I believe I have set up my boot.ini properly using:
C:Bootsectc.lnx="Linux Ubuntu"
After running dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 and putting that file in place.
For reference, I don't believe this is a Linux problem, as much as I am simply trying to guide the ntldr to be properly pointed to a place where it can boot Linux. When I go into the bios and disable the first and the third hard drives, grub pops right up and I'm able to boot Linux with no problem, so that piece is fine. I think it's just now trying to get the correct syntax so I can boot Linux without having to disable drives and reenable them.
For kicks I even tried these syntax types in boot.ini:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)="Linux11"
(i.e. 2nd disk, 1st partition ...etc...)
I read many troubleshooting documents on dual booting and so forth but I just can't get this right. For reference, I stated the way XP views my Hard Drives in the intro, which seem to be a different order than Linux sees them, yet I believe I've tried all the combos of settings for this to work (yet clearly have not). I have attached the output of boot_info_script*.sh here: [URL]. Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ..... Devices which don't seem to have a corresponding hard drive.
I'm a n00b at dual booting and I plan on installing Ubuntu 10.04 on a separate hard drive than my Windows 7 64 bit one in a dual boot situation. I have read that you can do this by unplugging the Windows hard drive, install Ubuntu on the other one, and than plug the Windows hard drive back in and everything will be fine and dandy. Is this correct? If it is, will I have to manually set the Primary and Secondary drive (in the BIOS I think?), or will it automatically do that.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI've been trying to properly install grub for the past 3 days and failing every time.I recently bought a new computer and would like to dual boot Windows 7 64 and Natty. On my previous machines, ubuntu installer has automatically detected windows. It does not do so on this machine.I have three hard drives: 2 ssd's and a single 3 tb drive for storage.
I would like one ssd for windows 7 and one for natty.Currently, I am able to boot into both OS's but only by altering the boot sequence of the drives from the bios. I am hesitant to install grub to the windows drive for fear I will lose the ability to boot into windows. I did this early in the discovery process and ended up having to reinstall windows.
Ok so first off my hardware Asrock 775dual-vsta Master and Slave hard drives on primary IDE Absolute Linux 2.6.33.3 ; Dos 7.1 (yes Dos 7.1 by itself no windows whatsoever) Absolute Linux=sda1 ; Dos=sdb1
Ok so I can't boot into dos from lilo boot menu. It boots fine however if I tell the bios to boot from the second HDD first (DOS). But it's inconvenient to tell the bios every time on power-up to choose the second hard drive as the first boot device. Here is my lilo.conf boot section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/bzImage
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
root = /dev/sda1
[Code]...
Either way when I boot from the first hard drive (linux hard drive) and lilo pops up, I select dos and hit enter then nothing... It just sits there and ctrl-alt-delete can't reboot my comp as it's frozen.
I don't wanna have to tell the bios to select my dos hard drive as my primary boot device everytime I wanna boot dos. I wan't my linux hard drive to be my primary boot device and have my dos hard drive selectable from the lilo boot menu. Why can't I do that? What am I doing wrong? I thought this was easier than dual booting from a single hard drive?
After I complete a big project I'm working on I'm going to be wiping and re-doing my desktop machine, probably in the next day or three. I'm going to be setting up a dual-boot; my first in about three years. I'll be using separate hard disks for this, and installing Slackware second on the bigger of the two drives. When I've done this in the past I've used Grub; Is there anything I need to know or pitfalls I need to avoid doing it with Lilo?
View 5 Replies View RelatedThis is not strictly a Linux question, although I am interested in any Linux cautions as to what to avoid that could impact my Linux on the computer in question. I have Linux (openSUSE-11.1) setup on dual boot with MS-Vista on a Dell Studio 1537 laptop. My wife is "fed up" with Vista, and has asked that I replace Vista with WinXP on this Laptop. I would like to do this over the Christmas holiday break. The laptop's 1 year support warrantee has expired. can someone explain to me the function of the two Dell /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 partitions ?
This laptop was purchased with MS Vista installed, with 3 primary partitions (small /dev/sda1 (called "Dell Utility" ),10GB /dev/sda2 (unknown - appears to be some sort of Dell backup/recovery partition ? ), /dev/sda3 (MS Vista which had the remainder of the 250GB drive, although I have subsequently reduced this to 69GB ).
Again, I note /dev/sda3 is the 69GB MS Vista partition (I reduced it to 69GB when I installed Linux (openSUSE-11.1)). I also believe it may be in /dev/sda3 where I should plan on installing winXP. Currently I have openSUSE-11.1 Linux in /dev/sda4 (divided into extended partitions, with /dev/sda5 (swap), /dev/sda6 (root), and /dev/sda7 (/home) for Linux and it works well. I plan to keep openSUSE-11.1 Linux when Vista is replaced by WinXP Can I remove and merge /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and /dev/sda3 and replace them with one partition for WinXP ?
Or am I better OFF keeping /sdev/sda1 (Dell Utility) ? and am I better off to keep /dev/sda2 (some sort of Vista ?? recovery) ? and only put winXP on /dev/sda3 ? Aside from the MBR with Grub being destroyed (when I replace Vista with winXP) is there anything else I need to be careful of wrt keeping my openSUSE-11.1 Linux install on this laptop ?
I've also sent a slightly different version of this post as a question to the Dell Support mailing list. p.s. for information, here is some output from Linux commands showing the contents:
[Code]....
We were trying to install w7 on a reserved partition. W7 did not like the partition (whatever we tried).
Since we had 3 hard-drives, on the allocated drive we deleted all partitions and set the partition table type new to MSDOS (yast etc.....).
W7 installed fine. We did not time it, but it appeared that 11.3 installs faster plus considering 11.3 installs quite a number of applications.
There are plenty of postings re integrating W7 to the Grub-menu.
This system went through several Suse updates, hardware upgrades, basically was all over the place.... we did a "new" install of 11.3 allocating its own hard-drive.
Install......fine, and Grub entered W7 to the menu. Worked ! Mounted the windows partition to /home/yourusername/windows
So, if you really (?) need W7 and have a spare hard-drive, this maybe is a clean solution.
I have a single hard-drive on a spare computer and I decided to try out Ubuntu on recommendation from a friend. I really like it now but at first I just dual-booted it, and now I want Vista gone. I know it's unnecessary to have just one OS but my hard-drive isn't particularly big and I'd prefer to have Ubuntu by itself. Can anyone tell me how to eliminate vista and leave Ubuntu as my sole operating system (I've all my files from computer on another computer so I don't have to worry about losing anything).
View 2 Replies View RelatedMy smallest disc has the Vista loader and nothing else but I cannot select it for Dual Booting in the Ubuntu installation set up only for use as an entire disc which would delete the Vista Loader.
This is what I have:-
1st disc - no operating system much data
2nd Disc - empty except for Windows loader
3rd Disc - no operating system much stuff.
My original plan was to give Ubuntu all of the smaller second disc and I deleted everything ready to give it the entire hard disc. It was only when I went to install Ubuntu it I found the Vista loader lurking on disc 2 and the only option the install Ubuntu set up gave me for disc 2 was to use the entire disc (wiping out Vista loader) otherwise I could have installed Ubunbtu on another disc - which it reported as having no operating system.
If I put Ubuntu on disc 1 would I have a dual boot arrangement given that the installer saw no operating system on that disc ? Is there any (simple) way I can install Ubuntu on disc 2 and not loose the Vista loader? I am installing this version of Ubuntu as it was on the DVD that came with book "Beginning Ubntu Linux" It took me long time to Psych myself up to install it and when I did . . .
I have two drives one is a 500 gig SATA drive running Vista SP 2 now the other Maxtor 160 Gig drive is empty. I would like to install Ubuntu on that drive. Now I just though of installing from the setup however would this screw up my Vista partition ?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI've used it once before but got fed up with the boot asking me everytime I turned my laptop on because I wasn't using it enough. I have Windows 7 on drive C . I want to keep it on drive C. I have several 1.5TB+ drives, and one of them is not being used. I want to dedicate it to Ubuntu, and be able to do a dual boot with my Windows 7 install. Is this possible? If it is, what about when this drive is not connected to my laptop? Will that mess up the boot process?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI'm trying to make a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 on my system. I have 9.10 correctly setup on what I see here as devsda2. devsda3 does contain /home. devsda1 is for Vista. They are on a 500Gb hard drive. I also have a second 500Gb hard drive, formerly on a raid 0 with the first one, but now independent (raid deactivated from bios). It is here know as /dev/sdb, and contains other 3 partitions. Raid 0 is not hardware, but is an intel fake raid.
I then have other 4 drives, causing me NO problem.
I start live mode of Ubuntu 10.04 with noraid option. When I try to setup Ubuntu, during the process, where it comes to manually select partitions, the two 500Gb hard drives disappears, such that I'm not able to install Ubuntu on what now is /dev/sda2
If I start live mode of Ubuntu without noraid option, I will see the two 500Gb hd as being part of a raid 0, such that I can't use them.
The other 4 hd normally appear in both cases.
I searched, and unfortunately all that did was raise my confusion level on this. "Grub"? "mdadm"? "fake"?, S/Wraid? Disk utility? So many options, so little understanding! Relevant stuff (Mostly reported by "Disk utility"):
- Lucid Lynx. PATA host adaptor -> IDE controller -> Maxtor 164GB H/D [I *think* this has Windoze on it, but can't remember!] There's also a CD & DVD drive on this IDE bus. PATA host adaptor -> SATA controller -> Seagate 500GB H.D. - The Ubuntu boot drive, currently a 250GB ext4 partition, 3GB swap and 250GB "unused".Peripiheral devices -> Firewire 400 -> 2 x Samsung 500GB H/D's. These were "stolen" from my Mac Book and are currently a RAID1 Apple array. Everything they contained is safely backed up, and these can be considered as "new" drives awaiting formatting. [It's actually a Buffalo Drivestation Duo, but their site was even more confusing than here.
everything is working wonderfully, but I'd like to use the 2 F/W drives in a RAID1 array - So, eventually to the question: How do I tell Ubuntu to use these drives as a RAID array? It seems I can format and partition etc from disk utility. Do I then use mdadm for configuration? Any other recommendations?
I have set up two external hard drives to automount in fstab with the following lines:
/dev/sdb1 /media/DownstairsBackup ntfs-3g rw,auto,user,exec,sync 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/UpstairsBackup ntfs-3g rw,auto,user,exec,sync 0 0
And right after I restart, all users have permission to read and write, and everything is fine. However, I have an automated backup utility (BackinTime) installed to back up particular (mounted network) directories every night, but whenever I check up on it the next day, I get the error "Unable to mount ..... Authorization required". (These network directories are mounted into the local filesystem in fstab as well.) Oddly enough, if I run BackinTime by hand as the users, it works fine. I'm running 10.04 LTS.
I finally have decided to give ubuntu a shot.Windows is becoming too familiar, and it's been forever since I have used command line since DOS.I really need some humility, and I think that Linux will teach me some.I am going to give it a whirl on a "spare" machine, dual booting with Windows 7 64 on two separate hard drives. I'm burning the ubuntu live cd x86 right now. I am going to unplug my windows drive and start the installation.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI am finding it hard to get 2 seperate hard drives to work each having different OS..... windows XP and Ubuntu 10.10. Making Ubuntu the master, it can recognise the drive but cannot boot from it. If XP is the master it does not recognise the Ubuntu drive at all.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have searched for this but can not find it. I want to install debian 6.0 squeeze on to both of my hard drives and run each as a seperate instance of debian, and be able to choose at boot up which one I want to run. I have an HP with 2 500 gig hard drives, running windows vista currently, processor is an intell quad 2 core 6600, nothing else on the pc for programs and such at this time. I would also like to keep the windows if possible to run other programs at a later time.
View 10 Replies View RelatedI have been messing around with the ubuntu family for some time now, and usually have no problem finding my answers. This one, however, is giving me some trouble. I have been using ubuntu on my laptop for some time now, and recently got a new 2TB hard drive for my desktop. I cloned the old hard drive to the new one, and decided to install ubuntu onto a third drive. The third drive was IDE, the new one is SATA. I disconnected the other hard drive, and so my current set up is a SATA drive with Windows 7, and an IDE drive with Ubuntu (11.04 of course)
Well, I am unable to dual boot between the two, unfortunately, and would like to figure out how. I would like to say the problem is with Windows, since that is the primary drive. No GRUB shows up upon booting when both drives are plugged in, and the Windows Bootloader does not show my installation of Ubuntu, instead it goes right to Windows.
I recently booted into linux from 9.10 and upgraded to 10.04. i was running a vista dual boot with 9.10 and everything worked fine. When linux asked where to install grub it said "if you dont know check all partitions "or something.so i did. i tried to boot back into windows and now it wont work, all i get is a blinking cursor.
View 9 Replies View Related