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Leopard + Vista + Ubuntu = Should all be on the same hard disk?

raggedjagged

By raggedjagged,
in OSx86 10.5 (Leopard)

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raggedjagged
raggedjagged
Posted
Posted

Hi all,

Well I've planned to reformat my drives as I'm about to buy a new hard drive for so I can keep my data solely on one drive...but what I'd like to know if what you guys think is the *ideal* solution for installing 3 OSes on one computer?

 

Should I rather get 1 big disk to install all the 3 OSes on different partitions? Or should I rather get 2 more smaller ones to install each OS on each hard disk?

 

And I'm assuming that having all my DATA (music photos videos, etc) on a totally separate hard disk with no OSes installed is recommended too?

 

Please advice on what you guys would do? Thanks!

 

Edit: Oh and I guess this question goes along with this thread: What's the recommended bootloader? Darwin(EFI)? Vista? or GRUB?

boubou
boubou
Posted
Posted

Hi,

I will try to do my best with english !

This is my experience...

I have a laptop (HP Pavillion dv9000) with 2 HD :

- the first one holds 2 partitions : Windows XP and HP recovery

- the second one holds my datas (ntfs).

I bought my laptop with this configuration.

Three months ago, I wanted to try Ubuntu. But I did not want to change my laptop configuration.

So, I bought an external HD USB (LaCie 500 Go ~100€).

I started to install Ubuntu from the live CD and the Ubuntu's desktop icon "Installer".

The target of the installation was my external HD USB (/dev/sdc in my case) and I choosed to install the boot loader Grub on this external HD USB (hd2 in my case).

So, if I let my latptop boot normally it starts Windows like it did before.

If I select external HD USB to boot at startup, I get Grub which can start Ubuntu.

I decided to reduce the size of the external HD with ubuntu's partition editor in order to have 3 parts :

- Ubuntu partitions : ext and swap

- HFS+ for Mac OS X

- FAT32 for sharing datas between Windows, Ubuntu and Mac OS X

I finally installed Max OS X into the hfs+ partition and I updated the Grub menu.lst via Ubuntu in order to boot Mac OS X.

So now I can :

- start Window normally, or,

- select external HD USB to boot at startup and via Grub select Ubuntu or Max OS X.

This is very cool ;)

What I suggest to you is :

- Buy an external HD USB.

- First, install MAC OS X : during installation use the Disk utily to create a hfs+ partition (1/3 of the size of HD)

- Install Ubuntu like I did (1/3 of the size of HD).

- Create the FAT32 partition to share datas (1/3 of the size of HD).

Last point : the FAT32 will not be recognized on Windows XP because this is an USB drive with more than one partition. To correct this update the driver of the USB Drive with the hitachi Microdrive USB (Hitachi Microdrive driver to make the disk as "fixed local drive" http://xpefiles.com/cs/files/folders/hardware/entry616.aspx) so you can see the FAT32 partition.

Enjoy !!!

BlueAvenue
BlueAvenue
Posted
Posted

On drive 1 have Vista and linux with grub as controlling bootloader on MBR.

On drive 2 have OS X whose bootloader access is also controlled by grub on drive 1 .

 

Trust me, this is the optimum setup. Works flawlessly.

Azurael
Azurael
Posted
Posted

I have Ubuntu 7.10, Mac OS 10.5 and WinXP SP2 on the same disk on my laptop. I use grub to select the OS through grub's built-in support for chainloading the windows bootloader and the new boot_v4 "EFI" bootloader for OS X.

Dan Druff
Dan Druff
Posted
Posted

Synaesthesia idea seems appealing but DeektheGeek ideas is safer. Unbuntu and Vista are less know to corrupt thing, they are finished OS and you normally do not need to change thing in them, which is not true for Leopard as we speak. If something get wrong with Leopard, it's alone on it's own disk, so no total crash to be expected.

 

P.S. Adrimaxi, ntfs-3G gave me a BIG problem and I lost my entire data drive after trying to reformat a NTFS partition on it to HFS+. It's cool to write on NTFS from OSX but it's maybe risky for some setup or operations.

kendon
kendon
Posted
Posted

i had the same problem with ntfs in ubuntu 7.04. some files disappeared, i think it is not stable when handling large files (like dvd-isos etc). luckily i was able to recover my data by doing a chkdsk on the partition in windows...

 

topic: i have xp, fedora8, ubuntu7.04, and vista on my laptops 80g hdd. works fine so far, /boot, xp and vista in primary partitions, and fedora, ubuntu and my data partition in the extended partition. with grub as bootloader this is a pretty fine thing.

the only thing i'm concerned about is the shared swap-partition: does anyone know what happens if i suspend ubuntu to disk (which is actually the swap-partition) and then start fedora, which wants to use the swap-partition as swapspace?

 

at the moment i'm dd'ing the leopard-flat to my formerly vista-partition (got a backup if i ever want to see it again...), though i think if have the possibility to dedicate a whole drive to leopard this would be the best solution. i would try it on an external hdd if i had one, would probably speed up the dd if wasn't reading and writing on the same disk...

 

when it's done i'm gonna try to patch the leopard to amd with tiger in vmware in ubuntu, since i don't hace a workung tiger-installation...

nombre
nombre
Posted
Posted
I have Ubuntu 7.10, Mac OS 10.5 and WinXP SP2 on the same disk on my laptop. I use grub to select the OS through grub's built-in support for chainloading the windows bootloader and the new boot_v4 "EFI" bootloader for OS X.

 

What is your entry for OS X in grub? What order did you install the OS's in? I wanted to do the exact same thing except Vista instead of XP! TIA

kendon
kendon
Posted
Posted 

title        Mac OSX
root        (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader    +1

 

for me it works when i use a bootstrap like this in the grub/menu.lst. darwin boots, but keeps resetting -> amd-patch is missing (i guess).

 

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Install_On_A_Partition_Simple_And_Accurate#Grub_in_short

 

there is more about the boot entries for grub in this link (and some interesting hints about the installation in general).

 

the order of installing doesn't really matter, though it might be easier to install windows first, so you don't have to bother reinstalling grub after windows overwrote the mbr during installation.

raggedjagged
raggedjagged
Posted
  • Author
Posted

Thanks guys!

 

So in case I have 2 hard drives, one for Vista and Linux and the other for Data...where do I install Leopard?

 

Scenario 1: Is it safe to install Leopard on the Vista+Linux drive? Or do I rather get a different drive for Leopard?(or is that not really worth the money spent on buying a new drive specially for Leopard?)

 

OR

 

Scenario 2: Do I keep the Data in the Vista+Ubuntu drive and leave OS X alone on a different drive?

 

OR

 

Scenario 3: Do I keep the Data on a different partition of the drive with Leopard?

 

And I assume GRUB is the best boot method?

 

Let me know guys, thanks a lot!

zoomie
zoomie
Posted
Posted

In my point of view, the ideal solution would be to have each operating system on its own separate hard drive. If you have Linux, Windows, and OSX all on the same hard drive, and then you experience a hardware failure on that drive, you'll lose access and data for all three operating system. If each OS has its own drive, a hardware failure on one OS will not affect the other systems. Of course this is requires spending more money on hardware and energy usage. But then again, hard drive prices have dropped a lot these days.

 

In your current situation, you have two hard drives, so this is what I'd recommend:

 

Install the operating system you will use most frequently on its own hard drive...the OS that is most important to you. Install the other two OS's on the other hard drive. In this method, if the hard drive containing your secondary OS's fails, your main OS is unaffected.

 

You can also add a data partition to both hard drives and store duplicate data in each data partition. In this way, a hard drive failure on one drive still leaves you with a functional hard drive with an OS to retrieve the data.

 

good luck,

Zoomie

  • 2 months later...
QMax
QMax
Posted
Posted

Hello,

I'm trying to configure my sistem just like Boubou.

Vista untouched on internal disk, and OSX (10.5.1 Kalyway) and Kubuntu on an external USB HDD, using Grub as bootloader only for these 2 OSs.

My first attempt was a disaster, Vista doesn't boot because Grub changed MBR on internal disk.

No boot for Linux and OSX too.... :P

 

Second attempt, installed OSX and next Kubuntu both on USB, installing Linux I disabled Grub install.

Vista now boots correctly, but something goest wrong on OSX, before Linux installation it booted fine, after kernel panic... :P:wallbash:

 

I'm a bit scared to do a third attempt without a guide or an help...

 

Tried to contact Boubou with a PM, no reply, so I'm to ask your help please.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Max

  • 2 months later...
vag
vag
Posted
Posted

Hello to all im new here but i managed to install 4 operating system in my laptop HP DV9500 i have two hard disks and i installed to the first HD partition1: Vista. Partition 2:xp and at the seccond HD partition 1:mac os x 10.5.1 and last ubuntu. No problems. What ever you will do install the ubuntu last. No problem with my pc...

 

GRUB:

 

title Ubuntu 7.10,

root (hd1,2)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=3322cc19-e0bd-477c-81f1-9786b66347e4 ro quiet splash vga=792

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

quiet

 

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

 

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian

# ones.

##title Other operating systems:

##root

 

 

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS

# on /dev/sda1

title Windows XP Professional

root (hd0,0)

savedefault

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

 

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS

# on /dev/sda2

title Windows Vista Ultimate

root (hd0,1)

savedefault

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

title Macintos OS X Leopard, 10.5

kernel (hd1,2)/iamefi/boot_v8

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