Dual boot on SSD+HDD

Hi everyone,
I'd like to have few tips abuot how to set up my new MBP 15'' 2011.
I'm a student designer, and usually work on adobeCS suite, FCP, Aperture,etc.... But i have to work with 3Ds max now, and here are my questions:
I want to change he HDD by a Crucial C300 SSD, and replace the superdive by the HDD.
I thought about installing osX and windows 7 on the SSD, and make the HDD the data disk. Do i have to make 2 partition on the HDD, one for osX, and the other windows, or one compatible partition?
So if someone has already done that, and knows how to set this up.
Thx for your help, and sorry for my english level....

This blog has some of the info you are looking for.. http://booncunian.wordpress.com/

Similar Messages

Satellite U940-108 - How to configure BIOS to boot dual OS from SSD / HDD

How can i configure the BIOS to boot multi os ssd and HDD?
I want to boot from SSD one os and other os from HDD,
When i try to do it i have windows error?
Can you help me

Hi
I assume you want to install the OS (which one???) on the internal mSATA 32GB SSD?
This mSATA SSD is used for caching (hybrid boot) in order to boot Windows 8 faster.
I would recommend you to install the second OS on the HDD.
For that you should create new partition which could be used for OS installation.
Then boot from the Windows installation disk and install the 2nd OS on the new created partition.

Triple Boot w/ SSD/HDD Setup

Hi guys,
I previously had a dual boot setup w/ windows 7. Recently, I upgraded my HD to a 500 gb WD caviar blue and moved it into an optibay along with putting in an intel 320 series SSD. I was wondering if it would be possible to triple boot with having my Mac OS install on the SSD and Ubuntu/Windows 7 on the HDD(therefore having 3 partitions on the HDD, one for my mac data(music,movies, etc.), one for windows, one for ubuntu) My SSD is 80 Gb and therefore would not be sufficient for accomadating all of the OSes so I would need to put it on the HDD. Another complication would be the fact that I am only able to use the external superdrive, but I have already made USB sticks of both OSes. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Well, I haven't tried this, but... the documentation says if you have more than one internal disk you have to disable one of them. I also don't know if Boot Camp Assistant will work on a disk that doesn't have Mac OS X on it at all, or if it just has an MBR. I know it gets ****** with three or more (visible) partitions, and will not even let you download/create the support driver USB stick, which is b.s.
However, if you can figure out a combination that Boot Camp Assistant will be agreeable, BCA 4 has the ability to somehow make it possible to run a Windows install image from a USB stick on certain Apple hardware. This is mentioned on page 4, in the middle paragraph, of the 10.7 Boot Camp Install Setup document PDF. But even if your hardware could support this, BCA may not let you do it for other reasons which of course it won't tell you why. It just won't let you. (Per usual Apple's error messages are not at all useful.)
Otherwise, I think you're going to have to remove the SSD, put the HDD back where it was, put the superdrive back inside the computer - do your installations - and then redo the surgery to get back to SSD + HDD.
Windows and Ubuntu install drivers based on the computer used for installation. With Ubuntu you might be able to get around this by rebuilding the initrd/initramfs after you get the drive back into your laptop, but I don't know if you can successfully get Windows to cooperate by moving the drive from one computer to another.
Basically you have a very custom situation and Apple doesn't tend to support custom anything. They provide tools for an extremely narrow type of support and if you deviate from that standard - well, you're on your own. So you have to blaze your own path.
Message was edited by: Chris Murphy. ****** = POd

Arch And Windows 7 Dual Boot On Separate HDD

Hi everyone.
Firstly, a big thank you to everyone for helping me out in my first thread regarding choice of partitions and filesystems.
I went on to install Arch today on my second HDD (160GB). My first HDD has Windows 7 installed on it. (The BIOS shows that the HDD with Win 7 installed is HDD1.)
Arch showed the HDDs as sda and sdb. I was installing on sdb and created my partitions accordingly.
sdb1 --> root (15GB)
sdb2 --> swap (1GB)
sdb3 --> var (10GB)
sdb4 --> home (remaining space)
I had to flag sdb1 as Bootable.
Then I was asked about mountpoints and something about selecting by dev or uuid. I didn't quite understand but selected dev. Then formatted with ext4. Did not add any parameters.
Before proceeding they gave a warning about no /boot partition but I continued anyway.
It was an FTP install and went pretty smoothly. I configured everything exactly as I had read in the guides online and Wiki. GRUB said it configured successfully (I did not make any chnges to it). I had put GRUB on sdb and not on any partition.
As I rebooted, my system did not show the GRUB but went straight on to Windows 7. I went into BIOS and changed my first drive to the 160GB Seagate where I had installed Arch and rebooted. This time GRUB came up without any option to boot Windows 7. When I selected Arch it gave an error and did not boot.
So I'm back on Windows 7 and need help. I'm a noob and did not much understand the solution that I saw on another thread. Since I intend to have the 2 OSs on separate drives and dual boot, what should I do?
Will be very grateful for any help.
Last edited by Ritwik7 (2010-06-06 12:01:31)

Here you go:
# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader
# /boot/grub/menu.lst
# DEVICE NAME CONVERSIONS
# Linux Grub
# /dev/fd0 (fd0)
# /dev/sda (hd0)
# /dev/sdb2 (hd1,1)
# /dev/sda3 (hd0,2)
# FRAMEBUFFER RESOLUTION SETTINGS
# +-------------------------------------------------+
# | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
# ----+--------------------------------------------
# 256 | 0x301=769 0x303=771 0x305=773 0x307=775
# 32K | 0x310=784 0x313=787 0x316=790 0x319=793
# 64K | 0x311=785 0x314=788 0x317=791 0x31A=794
# 16M | 0x312=786 0x315=789 0x318=792 0x31B=795
# +-------------------------------------------------+
# for more details and different resolutions see
# http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Framebuffer_Resolution
# general configuration:
timeout 5
default 0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
# (0) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/mapper/vghparch-lvroot ro quiet
initrd /kernel26.img
# (2) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/mapper/vghparch-lvroot ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img
I installed grub on the second hdd and configured the bios so this drive comes first in the boot sequence and as pyther pointed out above the drive where grub is loaded from becomes hd0.
Last edited by Ashren (2010-06-07 18:51:29)

Dual boot with Two HDDs using GRUB?

I thought I understood GRUB but this has got me puzzled.
If I have two HDDs:
hd0 = XP
hd1,0 = Vista
hd1,1 = Arch (I installed GRUB to this partition as well)
and I want to use NTLDR to chainload GRUB, how do I do it if NTLDR is on (hd0,0)?
On a normal (single HDD) dual boot setup it is quite easy: install the GRUB files to (hd0,1), dd the first 512 bytes in /dev/hda2 and copy it to hda1, then edit the boot.ini file in hda1 to load the dd image saved there.
However, when NTLDR is on (hd0,0) and the GRUB stage1.5 and stage2 files are on (hd1,1) how can I achieve a dual boot system using NTLDR to chainload GRUB? Can GRUB stage1 load from (hd0,0) and look for stage1.5/stage2 on a completely separate hard drive (hd1,1)? Or can't it be done?
As I said, it's got me beat. Has anyone achieved this?
Last edited by Shagbag (2007-10-30 16:36:12)

TheSaint wrote:It'll be necessary to configure mkinitcpio to address the correct path in order that the future kernel updates will go to ther right place.
See this for details.
I don't think so -- the use of a bind mount means that the kernel image can go in the standard location, that's the whole point of it.
@OP: Yes, just make sure to call the path to the respective kernel images relative to $ESP

Dual boot Linux - Windows on Satellite U940

Hello to everyone.
I'm quite new on this forum and I have a brand new Toshiba Satellite U940-10N? Using Linux for 2 years, I'd like to install a debian wheezy distribution on it.
On my former computer, only Debian was installed so I'm net really comfortable with dual boot especially with the ssd.
I don't really like windows but I keep it to work sometimes on it.
Do you think it would be better to install the linux system on the system like I've seen it on most of threads, with only the /home on the HDD ? Or do you think it would be interesting to build another raid like it is now for windows ? Would I have better perfomances and speed that way ?
Another question : is it possible to have an ext4 data partition and make windows to see it or do I have to write it in ntfs ? I have noticed that fat32 and ntfs written on linux with gparted are not reconized by windows 8.
Those are my questions for now.
Thank you for your help.

Hi there
First let's look at your situation - the U940-10N will most likely be a Win8 unit, right?
If YES - then the BIOS has to be set up to boot UEFI.
Secure Boot can be disabled.
It seems Debian is not so far in supporting UEFI / EFI boot modes.
Look at this announcement from back in October:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2012/20121018
So, you will need to make sure your debian flavor can boot in UEFI boot mode.
If not, You will have issues getting both OS'es (Debian and Win8) to live side by side and boot without issues.
Next, You'll need to make sure Debian is able to install a boot loader that takes Windows 8 into account and is able to start that OS.
Looking at storage, I tried to install Fedora on a dual-storage system (SSD + HDD).
I installed the OS on the SSD and my Home structure was placed on the HDD.
This worked very very well.
I think this also provides the best performance, however I have no real statistics to back it up.
Ext4 is not supported by Windows out of the box, but there is a driver existing which implements ext2,3,4 support for Windows: http://www.ext2fsd.com/
If You ask me, I would rather have Linux accessing an NTFS partition than have Windows trying to write to an Ext2/3/4 partition. I am fully confident in the NTFS support from Linux but not the other way around.
If the Fat and NTFS partitions are not recognised by Windows, please check that the partitions are Fat32 or NTFS.
It may be that the file systems are NTFS / Fat but the partitions have Linux signatures.
Hope this helps
BR Tom

Upgrading from 320gb hdd to 128gb ssd on Mac Pro dual boot.

I have a Mac Pro 2008 with a 320gb hdd and I want to convert it to a 128gb ssd. I have it dual boot from one drive partitioned 50/50. I was wondering how I should transition from hdd to ssd. The drive has less than 120 gb on it and the Mac Pro runs Mavericks and Windows 7.

Pop SSD into drive bay with adapter in FW800 drive adapter, use CCC to clone system and recovery partition.
As for Windows, it needs about 80GB at least esp. on an SSD. Use WinClone to make a restore image.
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB is $144 on Amazon and the 128GB is $80. I look at the 500GB $299 and think, "why not."
you could leave for now the slow old 320GB hdd for Windows and hold a backup for OS X.
Your system,either one actually, should only have OS and apps on boot drive, very little if any data, just 3-4GB for AppData or ~/LIbrary to hold preferences, mail and minimal data.
Convert, as in clone the system.

SSD + HDD, GPT & MBR dual boot.

Hi all,
I ordered my first SSD the other day and it is expected to arrive tomorrow. I current have a 500 GB HD that I dual boot Arch/Win 7. I was wondering the following:
It is possible to to put /boot, /var and my NTFS on the HDD with standard MBR, and install /, /home, and swap on my SSD with GPT? If so how might I go about doing that? If not, I can put /boot on my ssd as I don't believe it gets written to often. If I do that is it possible to dual boot a MBR drive from a GPT drive?
Also I am slightly confused about the UEFI section. I know my motherboard is "UEFI" but I don't know how to tell if it is in BIOS mode, or UEFI mode. Basially this is my first new computer if 5 years and a ton has changed
Any tips would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Sam

Chocobo wrote:
Thanks for the links.
In reference to https://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_du … I_boot_USB:
mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/[USB_DEVICE] should read: mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/[USB_FAT32_PART] correct? Just staying with convention of the rest of the wiki entry? It wouldn't make sense to format the device as FAT32, only the partition correct?
Minor issue.
Also, I am not sure step 4.2 or 4.3 are needed when for archboot seeing all the files already seem to be there.
ldlinux.sys version (installed by extlinux) should match the c32 and other syslinux modules in (USB)/boot/syslinux, otherwise syslinux will refuse to boot.
Hmm, I am not sure what I am doing wrong but I keep getting an "Operating system not found" error. I will have to keep playing with this, and see if I can figure it out.
May be due to the above reason, but not sure, since "Operating system not found" error is mostly from the BIOS (atleast in systems I have used), not from syslinux.

SSD, HDD and Dual Booting

I'm new to the whole SSD thing and wanted to know what I should partition my install of Linux along with Windows and what I should/could move to the HDD to reduce some wear and tear on the SSD. It would be nice to also hear what others may have done.

If new the the SSD thing means that you have an SSD that isn't from four of five years ago, you have nothing to worry about. All that crap that still floats around the internet about needing to reduce writes to your SSD are true, but only if you use one of the first generation SSDs (like when they wre new the the market). With wear leveling that actually works and improved garbage collection, today's SSDs should last a long time. I have seen reports of people trying to wear drives out by just writing them to death, and the controller goes out before the flash gets worn out. So at this point, all that stuff is probably just FUD.
Partitioning is a very personal thing. No one else can tell you what the "best" layout would be (except me... just use a single btrfs and subvolumes!). But in terns of a combined SSD/HDD situation, you should remember that although you want to store you media on the bigger rotational, putting your entire /home on the HDD is probably not the best idea. There are all kinds of configuration files and whatnot in your $HOME that can seriously beneift from the super fast read speeds and low latency of a SSD.

How to dual boot 2 HDD on p6-2490eo ?

W 8.1 on 1 TB HDD
UBUNTU on 2 TB HDD
How to establish dual booting?
Max

Hi,
You might run into issues running UBUNTU on a PC that has not been certified by HP for UBUNTU. You will need to research the hardware and determine if stable drivers are available. Notice that I said stable.
I would suggest the following precautions and BIOS changes to avoid issues.
Create the external HP recovery media and backup your data.
Disable Secure boot
Disable UEFI mode (enable legacy mode)
Unplug the hard drive containing Windows
HP Secure Boot Windows 8 Topics
If Windows boots up successfully then proceed with the UBUNTU installation. However, be sure to unplug the hard drive containing Windows until after UBUNTU is install. When booting up, tap the ESC key and then F9 to select the boot device menu.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

Dual HDD dual boot Win7/Win7 hibernate corrupts partitions? W510

I have two SSDs in my laptop using the ultrabay caddy. Both have 2 partitions each one with Windows 7 64bit and another one with OEM stuff on it (SYSTEM_DRV). I use the BIOS boot menu to boot between the drives. I have removed the drive letters so that no partitions of drive 1 are mapped in windows 2 on drive 2 and wise-versa.
What I have observered however is that when I hibernate windows 1, boot windows 2 do some work and shutdown then resume windows 1 - the windows 2 partition will get corrupt quite often (on either hdds). On several occassions I have seen the win 1/2 partition become RAW instead of NTFS (that is - it's completely borked) in Disk Manager or chkdsk running and wiping out all security descriptors on the file system resulting in a completely broken system (black screen of dead - unbootable).
Why am I seeing these corruptions and what can I do to prevent them?

Hi Benoitm,
Assuming the M4700 can boot from an external eSATA port, this should be possible. And it should be possible to install onto an HDD then put that drive in an external case and boot from it. Your preferences and drive letters should be retained. You might want to verify your system can boot to an external HDD first.
The Dell license only covers the version of the OS that came with the system. In theory, dual boot requires two licenses.

[SOLVED] Dual booting arch onto an SSD that already has W7 in MBR?

I currently have windows 7 64bit installed onto a 256gb m4 SSD. I would like to be able to dual-boot W7 and Archlinux, but so far I've been getting wildly varying accounts of doom and data deletion from every source that I've looked at- and unfortunately, the Archwiki's guide to dualbooting is out of date.
So here's the questions:
First, is UEFI something I need to look at? At the moment W7 seems to be on MBR. I'm getting conflicting accounts on whether this is not even an issue or if it will attempt to make my computer eat my dog.
Next, what is going on with sectors and alignment and such? Some people ignore them, some people delve so far into it that I think I vaguely know they're still talking about a hard drive.
Which leads me into partitioning, and not doing it in a way that's terrible. I can't find any information on this anywhere that isn't buried within the above-mentioned posts, along with incredibly vague warnings of GParted moving a partition, spoken of in a way as if that data is lost to the twilight zone.
Finally... pulling all this together is the largest issue.
Do any of you know good, factual resources where I can look into this stuff?
Last edited by ilar (2013-04-03 03:53:31)

1) If you knew what UEFI was you should have known it wasn't an option, and shouldn't have asked about it.
2) (G)parted and gdisk (if you go with GPT at some point) handle SSD sector alignment automatically, and have for some time. A google search could have revealed that.
3) Whether one uses an SSD or HDD, dual-booting will be the same: 2+ partitions devoted to separate operating systems. While SSDs and HDDs may be fundamentally different constructs, booting from them is not different at all. That's why you aren't finding anything saying such.
4) As for the wiki being out-of-date, the specific reason (as stated page's in the header) is that GRUB legacy is no longer officially supported in Arch. Disregard that information and use GRUB2/Syslinux/LILO and the process remains the same: Install the operating systems side-by-side and chainload the secondary OS. It doesn't matter one bit: I've dual-booted every Linux distro I've used over the past four years with Windows, from Ubuntu to Mint to SuSE to Sabayon to Arch to whatever, and I've done it all the exact same way, using HDDs and an SSDs and both in combination. There's plenty of information out there on this, and your time could better have been spent looking it up rather than arguing with people here.
5) Welcome to Arch.

S430 mSATA SSD and Dual Boot

Yesterday my Lenovo Thinkpad S430 arrived, I have some questions concerning dual booting Linux and Win 8 from the mSATA. I have a Crucial m4 128Gb with the current firmware 07MH which I want to want to install instead of the 16Gb mSATA SSD which is currently used for caching.
For that I want to do a clean Win 8 install (I got the ISO and a valid serial) and presumably an current Ubuntu. Unfortunately I have no experience with UEFI and Secure Boot and that stuff. Is there anything I need to do, are there any problems with what I want to do?
The current UEFI BIOS on my S430 is the GAET71WW (2.07), should I upgrade it to the current 2.54?
Is there anything else I should know?
Regards and thank you,
meruah

If I'm reading Hemanth Kumar's post correctly, 16GB is the largest mSATA drive provided by and supported by Lenovo for use as a cache.
I'd expect that you can use most any capacity mSATA drive in that slot for a primary OS drive. It is frequently done with Lenovo laptops to install a large mSATA SSD - as I did in my T420, 256GB - and keep the HDD as a data drive.
That said, I don't have specific experience with your machine. It would be great if someone with specific experience would join the conversation. Otherwise, I can only say it's probably OK.
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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W8.1/W7-64 dual boot, dual drive (SSD & SATA) GPT/MBR problems

I'm posting in both the W8 and W7 forums because I'm not sure which is more appropriate.
Setup:
New Dell XPS8700 with Windows 8.1 installed on a 256GB SSD drive. I upgraded to W8.1 Pro.
2nd drive is a 2TB SATA.
Goal:
Keep W8.1 Pro on SSD.
Install W7 Ultimate 64 (legal copy, installation disk) on SATA Drive.
Select which one I want at boot.
Main Issue
Cannot easily choose which OS to log into. See Dual Boot Problems and Current State for details.
Background: W7 Installation Probems
1. I disabled Secure Boot in the BIOS and Fast Startup in Windows 8.1
2. I created 3 partitions (D, E, F) on the SATA drive (a GPT drive)
3. Used the Advanced Option in W8 to boot from the DVD (absurd),
4. Windows 7 started setup from the DVD but at the initial screen (Language, Country), it hung. Hard. No keyboard, no mouse. Had to turn off computer.
5. Using F12, selected legacy boot from DVD. Now the installation got beyond the first screen. I selected Custom Install. When I tried to install to the E: partition, I got the message that W7 could not be installed on a GPT drive. From
a lot of research and reading, I'm guessing this is because I chose a legacy boot. But, please, note: the only reason I did a legacy boot was because I could not get past the first screen with a "normal" CD/DVD boot,
6. So, I went back into W8, deleted the volumes on the SATA drive, changed it to MBR, recreated the volumes.
7. Using F12, again selected legacy boot from DVD and was able to install W7 on the E: partition, except that every reboot during the installation process got me back into W8, so I had to restart with the F12 option/legacy boot to finish W7 installation.
8. Finally got W7 installed. Logged in. OK so far.
Dual Boot Problems
1. No boot menu. Computer booted directly into W8.1. And, yes, Fast Startup in W8.1 still disabled.
2. Downloaded and installed EasyBCD. Created boot menu for W8.1 and W7 with W8.1 the default.
3. Reboot, select W8. Fine, I'm into W8.1
4. Reboot, select W7. All I get is one bar of hieroglyphics across top of screen. Hard freeze. Had to unplug computer.
5. Do an F12 reboot and select legacy boot from the SATA drive. Get a different boot menu with Windows 7 on top and W8 Media version below. Select W7. It loads and I log in.
6. Do an F12 reboot and select legacy boot from the SATA drive. This time, select W8. Get an error that it can't find W8.
Current State
1. The default boot into W8 works fine.
2. Can't get into W7 unless I do an F12 legacy boot from SATA at startup.
3. If I do an F12 legacy boot from SATA, I can't get into W8.
I do not want to rely on F12 for 2 reasons: first, I want W7 to be my default working enviroment. Please do not try to convince me that there is no good reason for that. I want to do this, have legal, paid for copies of W7 (actually, I now have four.)
Second, it will make installing W7 updates nightmarish since I'll have go go through the whole F12 thing for every reboot.
I am assuming that the problem stems from the original GPT/MBR split (with the SSD being GPT and the SATA being MBR) - although I could be wrong. And, remember, the only reason I changed the SATA from GPT to MBR was because the W7 setup froze
at the initial screen when I first tried to install W7 with a normal boot from DVD.
Things I've tried:
1. Via W8, got to a command prompt where I ran bootsect.exe /scanos. The result was that it found NO Windows Installations. Obviously incorrect.
2. Uninstalled EasyBCD from W8.
3. Rebooted. Same boot menu as before: W8.1 on top, Windows 7 below (as I had set things up in EasyBCD).
2. Via W8 Command Prompt did a bcdboot c:\windows to try to get GUI boot menu. Got the error message: failure when attemptng to copy boot files.
What I want to do seems to me to be quite simple: run W8 from the SSD, run W7 from the SATA. It's my understanding that I should be able to install W7 on a GPT drive and that would, I am hoping,
solve the boot menu problem. But see Installation Problems above: I couldn't do the default boot from the DVD and install W7 because it froze at the first screen. Is there some other way to get past the freeze and install W7 to a GPT?
I've been working on this for two weeks now, have read more articles, watched more YouTube videos than I care to list. Need Help Desperately.
<textarea style="height:80px;width:444px;border:1px solid grey;padding:2px;"></textarea><select><option value="af">Afrikaans</option><option value="sq">Albanian</option><option value="ar">Arabic</option><option
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value="ca">Catalan</option><option value="zh-CN">Chinese (Simplified)</option><option value="zh-TW">Chinese (Traditional)</option><option value="hr">Croatian</option><option
value="cs">Czech</option><option value="da">Danish</option><option selected="selected" value="auto">Detect language</option><option value="nl">Dutch</option><option
value="en">English</option><option value="et">Estonian</option><option value="tl">Filipino</option><option value="fi">Finnish</option><option value="fr">French</option><option
value="gl">Galician</option><option value="ka">Georgian</option><option value="de">German</option><option value="el">Greek</option><option value="ht">Haitian
Creole</option><option value="iw">Hebrew</option><option value="hi">Hindi</option><option value="hu">Hungarian</option><option value="is">Icelandic</option><option
value="id">Indonesian</option><option value="ga">Irish</option><option value="it">Italian</option><option value="ja">Japanese</option><option value="ko">Korean</option><option
value="la">Latin</option><option value="lv">Latvian</option><option value="lt">Lithuanian</option><option value="mk">Macedonian</option><option value="ms">Malay</option><option
value="mt">Maltese</option><option value="no">Norwegian</option><option value="fa">Persian</option><option value="pl">Polish</option><option value="pt">Portuguese</option><option
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value="es">Spanish</option><option value="sw">Swahili</option><option value="sv">Swedish</option><option value="th">Thai</option><option value="tr">Turkish</option><option
value="uk">Ukrainian</option><option value="ur">Urdu</option><option value="vi">Vietnamese</option><option value="cy">Welsh</option><option value="yi">Yiddish</option></select>⇄<select><option
value="af">Afrikaans</option><option value="sq">Albanian</option><option value="ar">Arabic</option><option value="hy">Armenian</option><option value="az">Azerbaijani</option><option
value="eu">Basque</option><option value="be">Belarusian</option><option value="bg">Bulgarian</option><option value="ca">Catalan</option><option value="zh-CN">Chinese
(Simplified)</option><option value="zh-TW">Chinese (Traditional)</option><option value="hr">Croatian</option><option value="cs">Czech</option><option value="da">Danish</option><option
value="nl">Dutch</option><option selected="selected" value="en">English</option><option value="et">Estonian</option><option value="tl">Filipino</option><option
value="fi">Finnish</option><option value="fr">French</option><option value="gl">Galician</option><option value="ka">Georgian</option><option value="de">German</option><option
value="el">Greek</option><option value="ht">Haitian Creole</option><option value="iw">Hebrew</option><option value="hi">Hindi</option><option value="hu">Hungarian</option><option
value="is">Icelandic</option><option value="id">Indonesian</option><option value="ga">Irish</option><option value="it">Italian</option><option value="ja">Japanese</option><option
value="ko">Korean</option><option value="la">Latin</option><option value="lv">Latvian</option><option value="lt">Lithuanian</option><option value="mk">Macedonian</option><option
value="ms">Malay</option><option value="mt">Maltese</option><option value="no">Norwegian</option><option value="fa">Persian</option><option value="pl">Polish</option><option
value="pt">Portuguese</option><option value="ro">Romanian</option><option value="ru">Russian</option><option value="sr">Serbian</option><option value="sk">Slovak</option><option
value="sl">Slovenian</option><option value="es">Spanish</option><option value="sw">Swahili</option><option value="sv">Swedish</option><option value="th">Thai</option><option
value="tr">Turkish</option><option value="uk">Ukrainian</option><option value="ur">Urdu</option><option value="vi">Vietnamese</option><option value="cy">Welsh</option><option
value="yi">Yiddish</option></select>
English (auto-detected) » English

SOLUTION:
The problem I described above stemmed from the fact that I had been unable to install W7 without using the legacy option. (The W7 installation would freeze at the first screen.) That created the boot incompatibilities between W8.1 and W7because I had
to use legacy for the latter but not for the former.
It turned out that the USB ports were the basic problem. The Windows 7 installation program doesn't recognize USB 3.0 ports. Unfortunately, the A08 BIOS in the XPS 8700 -Special Edition (as of late Dec. 2014) has only 3 options for enabling/disabling
the USB ports: Front, Top, Back. The back panel has a mix of USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports and I needed a 2.0 port for the mouse and keyboard to work. However, disabling the Front and Top USB ports was sufficient. The W7 install no longer froze.
So, from my W8 installation, I wiped out the SATA drive, changed it back to GPT, partitioned it, disabled the Front and Top USB ports in the BIOS and booted from the W7 DVD. The installation went fine. After installing the network driver, downloaded
previously, and updating W7, I installed the USB 3.0 drivers and then re-enabled the Top and Front in the BIOS.
So, now the EasyBCD boot options work just fine. Both drives are GPT. No legacy options.
<textarea style="height:80px;width:444px;border:1px solid grey;padding:2px;"></textarea><select><option value="af">Afrikaans</option><option value="sq">Albanian</option><option value="ar">Arabic</option><option
value="hy">Armenian</option><option value="az">Azerbaijani</option><option value="eu">Basque</option><option value="be">Belarusian</option><option value="bg">Bulgarian</option><option
value="ca">Catalan</option><option value="zh-CN">Chinese (Simplified)</option><option value="zh-TW">Chinese (Traditional)</option><option value="hr">Croatian</option><option
value="cs">Czech</option><option value="da">Danish</option><option selected="selected" value="auto">Detect language</option><option value="nl">Dutch</option><option
value="en">English</option><option value="et">Estonian</option><option value="tl">Filipino</option><option value="fi">Finnish</option><option value="fr">French</option><option
value="gl">Galician</option><option value="ka">Georgian</option><option value="de">German</option><option value="el">Greek</option><option value="ht">Haitian
Creole</option><option value="iw">Hebrew</option><option value="hi">Hindi</option><option value="hu">Hungarian</option><option value="is">Icelandic</option><option
value="id">Indonesian</option><option value="ga">Irish</option><option value="it">Italian</option><option value="ja">Japanese</option><option value="ko">Korean</option><option
value="la">Latin</option><option value="lv">Latvian</option><option value="lt">Lithuanian</option><option value="mk">Macedonian</option><option value="ms">Malay</option><option
value="mt">Maltese</option><option value="no">Norwegian</option><option value="fa">Persian</option><option value="pl">Polish</option><option value="pt">Portuguese</option><option
value="ro">Romanian</option><option value="ru">Russian</option><option value="sr">Serbian</option><option value="sk">Slovak</option><option value="sl">Slovenian</option><option
value="es">Spanish</option><option value="sw">Swahili</option><option value="sv">Swedish</option><option value="th">Thai</option><option value="tr">Turkish</option><option
value="uk">Ukrainian</option><option value="ur">Urdu</option><option value="vi">Vietnamese</option><option value="cy">Welsh</option><option value="yi">Yiddish</option></select>⇄<select><option
value="af">Afrikaans</option><option value="sq">Albanian</option><option value="ar">Arabic</option><option value="hy">Armenian</option><option value="az">Azerbaijani</option><option
value="eu">Basque</option><option value="be">Belarusian</option><option value="bg">Bulgarian</option><option value="ca">Catalan</option><option value="zh-CN">Chinese
(Simplified)</option><option value="zh-TW">Chinese (Traditional)</option><option value="hr">Croatian</option><option value="cs">Czech</option><option value="da">Danish</option><option
value="nl">Dutch</option><option selected="selected" value="en">English</option><option value="et">Estonian</option><option value="tl">Filipino</option><option
value="fi">Finnish</option><option value="fr">French</option><option value="gl">Galician</option><option value="ka">Georgian</option><option value="de">German</option><option
value="el">Greek</option><option value="ht">Haitian Creole</option><option value="iw">Hebrew</option><option value="hi">Hindi</option><option value="hu">Hungarian</option><option
value="is">Icelandic</option><option value="id">Indonesian</option><option value="ga">Irish</option><option value="it">Italian</option><option value="ja">Japanese</option><option
value="ko">Korean</option><option value="la">Latin</option><option value="lv">Latvian</option><option value="lt">Lithuanian</option><option value="mk">Macedonian</option><option
value="ms">Malay</option><option value="mt">Maltese</option><option value="no">Norwegian</option><option value="fa">Persian</option><option value="pl">Polish</option><option
value="pt">Portuguese</option><option value="ro">Romanian</option><option value="ru">Russian</option><option value="sr">Serbian</option><option value="sk">Slovak</option><option
value="sl">Slovenian</option><option value="es">Spanish</option><option value="sw">Swahili</option><option value="sv">Swedish</option><option value="th">Thai</option><option
value="tr">Turkish</option><option value="uk">Ukrainian</option><option value="ur">Urdu</option><option value="vi">Vietnamese</option><option value="cy">Welsh</option><option
value="yi">Yiddish</option></select>
English (auto-detected) » English
<textarea style="height:80px;width:444px;border:1px solid grey;padding:2px;"></textarea><select><option value="af">Afrikaans</option><option value="sq">Albanian</option><option value="ar">Arabic</option><option
value="hy">Armenian</option><option value="az">Azerbaijani</option><option value="eu">Basque</option><option value="be">Belarusian</option><option value="bg">Bulgarian</option><option
value="ca">Catalan</option><option value="zh-CN">Chinese (Simplified)</option><option value="zh-TW">Chinese (Traditional)</option><option value="hr">Croatian</option><option
value="cs">Czech</option><option value="da">Danish</option><option selected="selected" value="auto">Detect language</option><option value="nl">Dutch</option><option
value="en">English</option><option value="et">Estonian</option><option value="tl">Filipino</option><option value="fi">Finnish</option><option value="fr">French</option><option
value="gl">Galician</option><option value="ka">Georgian</option><option value="de">German</option><option value="el">Greek</option><option value="ht">Haitian
Creole</option><option value="iw">Hebrew</option><option value="hi">Hindi</option><option value="hu">Hungarian</option><option value="is">Icelandic</option><option
value="id">Indonesian</option><option value="ga">Irish</option><option value="it">Italian</option><option value="ja">Japanese</option><option value="ko">Korean</option><option
value="la">Latin</option><option value="lv">Latvian</option><option value="lt">Lithuanian</option><option value="mk">Macedonian</option><option value="ms">Malay</option><option
value="mt">Maltese</option><option value="no">Norwegian</option><option value="fa">Persian</option><option value="pl">Polish</option><option value="pt">Portuguese</option><option
value="ro">Romanian</option><option value="ru">Russian</option><option value="sr">Serbian</option><option value="sk">Slovak</option><option value="sl">Slovenian</option><option
value="es">Spanish</option><option value="sw">Swahili</option><option value="sv">Swedish</option><option value="th">Thai</option><option value="tr">Turkish</option><option
value="uk">Ukrainian</option><option value="ur">Urdu</option><option value="vi">Vietnamese</option><option value="cy">Welsh</option><option value="yi">Yiddish</option></select>⇄<select><option
value="af">Afrikaans</option><option value="sq">Albanian</option><option value="ar">Arabic</option><option value="hy">Armenian</option><option value="az">Azerbaijani</option><option
value="eu">Basque</option><option value="be">Belarusian</option><option value="bg">Bulgarian</option><option value="ca">Catalan</option><option value="zh-CN">Chinese
(Simplified)</option><option value="zh-TW">Chinese (Traditional)</option><option value="hr">Croatian</option><option value="cs">Czech</option><option value="da">Danish</option><option
value="nl">Dutch</option><option selected="selected" value="en">English</option><option value="et">Estonian</option><option value="tl">Filipino</option><option
value="fi">Finnish</option><option value="fr">French</option><option value="gl">Galician</option><option value="ka">Georgian</option><option value="de">German</option><option
value="el">Greek</option><option value="ht">Haitian Creole</option><option value="iw">Hebrew</option><option value="hi">Hindi</option><option value="hu">Hungarian</option><option
value="is">Icelandic</option><option value="id">Indonesian</option><option value="ga">Irish</option><option value="it">Italian</option><option value="ja">Japanese</option><option
value="ko">Korean</option><option value="la">Latin</option><option value="lv">Latvian</option><option value="lt">Lithuanian</option><option value="mk">Macedonian</option><option
value="ms">Malay</option><option value="mt">Maltese</option><option value="no">Norwegian</option><option value="fa">Persian</option><option value="pl">Polish</option><option
value="pt">Portuguese</option><option value="ro">Romanian</option><option value="ru">Russian</option><option value="sr">Serbian</option><option value="sk">Slovak</option><option
value="sl">Slovenian</option><option value="es">Spanish</option><option value="sw">Swahili</option><option value="sv">Swedish</option><option value="th">Thai</option><option
value="tr">Turkish</option><option value="uk">Ukrainian</option><option value="ur">Urdu</option><option value="vi">Vietnamese</option><option value="cy">Welsh</option><option
value="yi">Yiddish</option></select>
English (auto-detected) » English

Dual-boot on MBP Retina SSD

Hi!
I've just started university and have been wondering whether to get a Mac or PC (I already own a desktop Windows PC). After much thought, I've decided to go the Mac "ultrabook" way, namely the MBP 13'' Retina (I might still choose the MB Air...).
I know that there are many alternatives to OneNote 2013 (whether special Mac ones or multiplatform like Evernote) but none has been as compelling as OneNote (especially because I have my desktop PC which I would also like to use to edit notes).
So I see two solutions :
1) Use the OneNote web app during lectures
2) Set up a OS X/Windows 8(.1) dual-boot
My question is, regarding option 2 : does a dual-boot "hurt" the SSD in some way like reducing it's lifespan? Furthermore, is it worth the effort? Does it work well?
Thanks in advance!
Jonas

Don't forget that you don't have to choose to "dual boot" only. You have the option of runnign Windows in a virtual machine environment like Parallels Desktop, VMWare Fusion, or Virtual Box. Each of those allows you to create a virtual PC within your Mac, then boot that virtual PC just as if it were a real PC. At that point, you are then running Windows and can install and run your Windows software on that virtual machine. I have gone this route with my latest MacBook Pro, which is a Late 2011 model, and it is older and slower than the MacBook Pro with Retina that you are looking to buy...

Dual boot on SSD+HDD

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