Mint XP Win 7 Triple Boot?

[MoonJumper]

Hello Forum, On one drive set up, I have, "Linux Mint 19.1 and Win XP," dual boot. On a separate drive I have, "Windows 7." Both drives are connected to my PC and I can choose which OS to boot to from the GRUB menu. Is it possible to make an image copy of my Windows 7 OS and perhaps by some procedure, restore it onto a separate partition on my first disk, ie, Mint and XP? So my goal would be to have a triple boot system on one drive. Regards, MoonJumper.

[MoonJumper]

Hello, Many thanks for your prompt reply with your comprehensive suggestions. As you mention, it does seem quite a lot of steps to get it all to work properly. The main reason for wanting to get all my OS's on one drive, is as follows. Before booting up my PC, I have to unplug the cables on one of my back-up drives and then plug in my SSD, Win 7 to those cables. I don't want to change the set ups on my Mint /XP. One idea I have, ( If this is possible ), is to make a fresh install of Win 7 on the Mint / XP drive, ( Triple boot ). Then having made an image of my Win 7 OS, would be to restore that image to the freshly installed Win 7. Thus this would replace the basic Win 7 install. I wonder if the XP and Win 7 bootloaders would cause an issue? If I had a couple more SATA ports then I would not need to do the above. I know that there are PCIe cards to buy that do have extra SATA ports, however I think I'll leave that option out for the time being. MoonJumper.

[JerryF]

Question for you. Do you absolutely need either one of the Windows OSes?

Windows XP end of support was 2014.
Windows 7 end of support was 2020.

[cretsiah]

This might be of interest

https://www.aomeitech.com/pa/standard.html

have used it once before to move partition / drives

why using it ...... it avoids some of the win 7 not right hardware crap that in-validates your install

notes
- will be listed as recovery
- drive your moving to needs to be same or bigger than the drive it is currently on
- deal with windows partitions / drives first
- after installing mint it might be a double grub / windows boot menu entry to get to windows....
- EDIT: Special Note *
please be aware that this moves/ copies the entire partition / drive
example:
if win XP is in a 100GB partition:
XP used = 40GB
Free space = 60GB
the total used + free space gets moved

if you wish to avoid the excess free space getting moved use disk management in win 7 to shrink the drives / partitions first and then add a DATA partition to the free space.. ( but you must have at least 10% free space )
example:
- XP used 40GB
- free space 60GB
= reduce to 50GB

My MBR based triple boot: ( added label to the partition / drive so i could tell them apart in gparted )
example: with grub installed and linux mint set as first boot

grub menu
- Linux Mint
- Advanced Recovery / Special options
- Windows

clicking on windows entry (my case )
- win 7 sp1
-win 10 v2004 ( recovery )

hope that helps

[cretsiah]

re-read my previous post i forgot some info

@PCDoctor

i believe it does something similar to the dd command in linux but i do not have experience enough/ confidence to do that

or it might use a combo of the [dot]VHD file format and back-up service but i dont know.... i just know it works fairly well

[MoonJumper]

Hello, Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas. I think that as stated in the reply by, "PC Doctor," there are quite a lot of steps to take into consideration to get it all working properly. I Am now reconsidering the idea of buying a two port PCIe SATA card and installing that. This would make a better and simpler way of making the triple boot OS's work. However I haven't decided yet and will continue to give the mater more thought. MoonJumper.

[cretsiah]

using https://www.aomeitech.com/pa/standard.html is relatively painless

thats why i suggested it

One idea I have, ( If this is possible ), is to make a fresh install of Win 7 on the Mint / XP drive,

problem with fresh installs of win xp and win 7
A) there are no activation servers any more
B) making the phone call and choosing wrong selection in the menu will give you a " NO LONGER Supported " message
C) if you get the right place, you have a massive number sequence to write down ( and you will need to keep this for future installs on the same system afterwards - if it screws up)

[MoonJumper]

Hello Cretsiah, Yes indeed, XP & Win7 are no longer supported as you note. I only use XP / 7 for a few legacy software programs such as music etc. MoonJumper.

[Pierre]

you can actually use the Gparted program, that is on the LinuxMint Live Media.
and then use that to Copy / Paste any partition from one drive to another drive.

if all three of those systems, were Installed using an Legacy partition system.
then you could simply redo the LinuxMint Boot Loader / re-install again.
& that would pick up the two other systems.