[Solved] Dual boot on two internal HD and old Boot

[JRenaud]

Hi,

I have done some dual boots (xp or W7 / Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint) on a same HD but never on two internal hd.

I read, I read again but I am not sure how to organize the dual boot (Windows 7 home premium 64 bits) when I will install Linux Mint 14 Xfce Nadia 64 bits on my second HD (The dvd is ready). What I read (http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/tutoriel/comme ... ropre_2_dd (sorry, in French)) is confusing talking about grub and grub-pc when some others are talking about grub2. They say I need to change the order of the boot and...

First question : can you give me and advice or some links (in English it's perfect) about the dual boot on two internal SATA disks with the usual old Boot ?

Second question : in case I would want in the futur to "play" with servers I want to prepare the partitionning for this purpose. Do I need seven partitions (
/boot, /, /usr, /var, /tmp, swap, /home) or less or more? I have 160 Go free for Nadia...

Thanks for your answers.

Jacques

P5G41T-M LX3, second hand Core duo E 8400, 4 Go RAM (I will have 8 Go (4 Go * 2)), Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 1 Go low profile, an Aurum (Fsp / Fortron) 500W gold and two hard disks. The WD Rea 500 Go (7200 rpm 64 Mo Sata-II 3.5") is a new one. I installed Windows 7 home premium 64 bits. Three partitions 100 Mo, 45 Go, 76 Go. I keep the rest for...Olivia. The second hd, a little old but healthy according to CrystalInfo, 160 Go (Seagate ST3160815AS ATA Device (SATA)), is formatted in Ntfs and empty

[usbtux]

Presuming windows is on the first drive = SDA. Mint will be installed on second drive SDB, all existing data on second drive will be destroyed, back up every thing you need to keep.

Disconnect any external drives apart from your liveusb/dvd.

From the mint installer choose "something else" option.

Make your root partition primary say 20Gb.
Then make swap if you think you want it, slightly larger than your ram as an extended partition.
Next your home partition that again within the extended partition. What ever size you want.

Leave as much unallocated space as required for future installs. (either inside or outside the extended partition)

Make sure that the boot device is SDA, that is the first disk - not a partition.


This http://youtu.be/gVCfeFOxGLQ shows how to install to an external disk - its exactly the same process, just make sure as I said above the boot device is SDA, which will be the default option.

[JRenaud]

Hi usbtux.

It looks so simple explained like you did. Not only it looks simple, it is so simple! I am writing from Linux Mint, I already proceeded to update, to import bookmarks and passwords, and to change the order of the boot (for my wife). I don't feel good today, some medical problems, so I was too much anxious to do something wrong

I will have a look to the video. The video is perfect if we follow you advice on the boot device

I kept half of the disk free.

Thanks a lot to you usbtux.

Jacques

[usbtux]

Hello, usbtux,
I would like to do the same as Jacques did. Thank you for the tutorial.
However, I couldn't understand why "all existing data on second drive will be destroyed". In my case I have 3 internal HDDs. On the first I have Windows 7, on the second Fedora and I would like to install Linux Mint on the third. When I installed Fedora it was pretty much automatic. I just had to leave some free space o HDD 2, tell Fedora that I wanted to install it on that drive and that was all. I have 50Gb free on the third driver.
1) Isn't it possible to install Linux Mint on the free space while preserving the other partition on the same HDD?
2) Ins't the installation program able to create the necessary partitions automatically on the free space?
Best regards,
Heber

1. Yes
As long as there's space and enough partitions available (max 4 primary). Choose alongside option.
Jaques wanted to take over the drive for possible testing/future installs.
2. Yes
Do an automatic install std install - there will be no /home partition, just root and swap
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzXZpEWTApc you should point the hard drive choice to the 3rd disk.

[JRenaud]

From the mint installer choose "something else" option.

Hi usbtux,

Thanks to you W7 (on the first disk) and Nadia (on the second one) are running fine. But this time I want to install BOSS 4.0* to train on technical words and sentences in Hindi. I intend to install it on the second drive beside Nadia. Have I to do something else than following your advices of the 12th April ?

Wish you a nice Sunday.

* As I explained there http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=137722. BOSS is a Linux in 18 Indian languages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Ope ... _Solutions and http://bosslinux.in/

[usbtux]

Install exactly the same as mint - onto the second disk and this time into the unallocated space.

Expand the extended partition to fill the unallocated space before installing.
This time you dont need to make a swap partition just use the existing - although you may need to point the installer at the existing swap partition.


MOVED TO THE ONGOING THREAD - THIS ONE IS MARKED AS SOLVED

[JRenaud]

Hi usbtux,

Thank you very much.

But I don't understand what you mean by - Expand the extended partition to fill the unallocated space before installing -.

The second disk has 3 partitions (20 Go, 44 Go, 8 Go) for Linux Mint 14 Xfce Nadia 64 bits and the fourth is 77 Go Free...