Adding OSX to Win7/Ubuntu

[OldMuttonHead]

Hi, guys!

 

I'm new to the forum and I've been reading extensively quite a few of the posts off and on all day today and I'm a little bit confused and I hope you can help me.

 

I have a system that currently has Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04 dual booted with two separate partitions on the same hard drive using grub 2. What I would like to do is install a 2nd hard drive to install OSX and as easily as possible triple boot between them, preferably from one menu, although I'm not particularly married to grub. I switch back and forth from Ubuntu and Win7 often and I think have an OSX option would be great also. I do a lot of video editing and some tools on some OSs are just better than others.

 

I've seen countless examples on how to do a triple boot by installing OSX first, but I'm having a hard time finding a good example of adding OSX to an already existing dual-boot system, especially one where I'm adding a hard drive specifically for OSX.

 

Thanks!!

 

Rick

[mulcyber]

Hi, guys!

 

I'm new to the forum and I've been reading extensively quite a few of the posts off and on all day today and I'm a little bit confused and I hope you can help me.

 

I have a system that currently has Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04 dual booted with two separate partitions on the same hard drive using grub 2. What I would like to do is install a 2nd hard drive to install OSX and as easily as possible triple boot between them, preferably from one menu, although I'm not particularly married to grub. I switch back and forth from Ubuntu and Win7 often and I think have an OSX option would be great also. I do a lot of video editing and some tools on some OSs are just better than others.

 

I've seen countless examples on how to do a triple boot by installing OSX first, but I'm having a hard time finding a good example of adding OSX to an already existing dual-boot system, especially one where I'm adding a hard drive specifically for OSX.

 

Thanks!!

 

Rick

 

You are in luck! Some people disconnect their first drive and don't

take chances of drive one's MBR being overwritten. Or you can be careful.

Chameleon, the Snow Leopard bootloader should be installed to the

MBR of the second drive after the installation of Snow Leopard. You

can boot from either drive during the startup of your computer; my

system uses the F12 function key to select which drive to boot.

 

Or you can go into your Bios and change the order of the drives. I don't

mean boot order preference for other devices like cds, and usb sticks.

Chameleon should show all your bootable partitions to choose from.

 

So that is the easy part. Hackintosh does not readily install on a wide

variety of systems. You can search Google with terms: Hackintosh

and your motherboard or computer model # and check compatibility.

[OldMuttonHead]

Ok, sounds easy enough. Let me make sure I have this correct, though.

 

So, I install the drive as my 2nd drive, boot from the Snow Leopard disk and install to that drive. This will leave my current Win/Ubuntu drive intact, correct? If I then just boot, will it boot to my 1st drive, but if I want to boot to OSX then I change the boot order either via the boot order menu or via BIOS and choose to boot to the 2nd drive?

 

From what I've been reading about Hackintosh, I should be ok hardware-wise. I'm going to double-check to be sure before I waste my money on OSX, but from everything I've seen, I have a pretty standard system almost as if I was planning to do this all along.

[mulcyber]

So, I install the drive as my 2nd drive, boot from the Snow Leopard disk and install to that drive. This will leave my current Win/Ubuntu drive intact, correct?

 

If I then just boot, will it boot to my 1st drive, but if I want to boot to OSX then I change the boot order either via the boot order menu or via BIOS and choose to boot to the 2nd drive?

 

If you already have your case open, just unplug your first drive and

that is an added safety measure, because it can't be written to.

 

When your computer boots up, it goes through various screens.

If your mobo supports, one can tap a Function key (F12 on mine)

and choose which drive to boot from, you are not in the Bios.

 

To make it permanent, you have to inside the Bios, usually the Delete key or F2.

When they write about changing the boot order they usually mean

change the priority to cd or usb or hard drive. I don't mean that.

There is another choice, usually in the same section, that just changes

the order of your hard drives. You can change drive0 on top to drive1

on top or drive4 etc. Your Bios will likely support this, but you have

to look for it.

For the temp choice of what to boot, you are not inside the Bios. The

permanent order of boot dev priority, cd or usb or drive, can be changed

inside the Bios. Also, and what I mean, is that only the order of the hard

drives can/needs be changed, and that is also inside Bios, a separate option

than the option which changes the priority of boot of cd, usb and hard drives.

 

One doesn't just boot from the Snow Leopard disk. Here is a link to

a guide I used,

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/ibo...ac-os-x-on.html

 

Read about [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]. That functionality must be provided, even if it is

done from one dvd, and then it won't be retail Snow Leopard. I used

SL 10.6.3 retail which cost $27 from Amazon.

 

Notice that there are changes made to the Bios. I planned for this,

so I installed Windows using AHCI mode in Bios. People who add

SL later often have installed Windows in IDE mode (in the Bios).

 

I've read Hackintosh described as a geek hobby. I studied devices

that were known to be compatible with Hack and ordered them and

built this system. I would describe installing SL as about 20 times

harder than installing Pinguy, a Ubuntu derivative. For people who

have less compatible systems it can take days and then never fully

work as it would in Windows. The problem is with the drivers aka kexts.

 

You can boot all three systems with free Win Easybcd as well, but I

learned that it has limitations compared to Chameleon.