Dual Boot OS X and Linux

I'm currently using OS X 10.3.9 on my G4 Mac Mini and have around 20gb of free space left. I would like to split off 15gb or so to install Debian Linux and have a dual boot setup.
Does anyone know of any software that I can use to create a new partition without affecting the OS X partition? Something similar to partition magic, that will leave the current OS alone?
Thnx.

There are several commercial utilities available such as SpeedTools, iPartition, etc. Look for them at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Similar Messages

Dual Boot Windows 8 and Linux?

I have (UEFI System) an ASUS K55A UEFI motherboard laptop that came factory with Windows 8. I would like to install backtrack linux and Windows 8, but before I go screwing up my laptop, I want to see if this would be at all possible. I would use a virtual
machine, but I need Backtrack Linux on a physical machine for testing purposes as I am taking a course in computer forensics, and I want to test cracking my home wi-fi. My processor is an Intel Core i5 2.5 ghz with a 500 GB HDD and 8GB DDR3 RAM. Any insight
on this would be appreciated. Thank You.

Hi,
You can refer to this article to get detail information.
http://apcmag.com/how-to-dual-boot-windows-8-and-linux.htm
Niki Han
TechNet Community Support

How can I dual-boot Mac OSX and Linux Mint?

Hey guys, I was wondering if it is possible to dual-boot both OS's similar to OS X and Windows 7/8...but first I'm wondering if it will void my MacBook Air Warranty (w/ AppleCare) as ultimately it wouldn't be worth it then!
Thanks!
-Stu

Which CD are you trying to use?
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) originally came on DVD.
A media exchange program initially was available:
http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/TigerMediaExchangeFormv5.pdf
So maybe you did an exchange for CDs?
You may find this article helpful:
http://weblog.techdad.net/2006/11/12/dual-boot-mac-osx-and-ubuntu/

Dual Booting Windows 7 and Linux on a IdealPad Y580

Okay, I am a gradaute student and need to have linux dual booted with windows 7 on my y580. It currently has windows 7 on it. However, it already has four primary partitions.
C:/ Windows OS
A hidden OEM
D:/Lenovo
And a boot system drive.
Is there anyway to convert one of thse drives into an extended partition ? HowCan I delete one of the partitions ? did you guys get your dual boots to work in this case. Please list step by step if possible.

Hello and welcome,
You can probably finagle the partitions to allow for dual boot: copy the contents of D: to C: and delete D:, for instance. Speculating, since I don't have an IdeaPad to test on. You usually/probably/maybe lose the OneKey Recovery feature if you touch the partitions.
Others here on the Linux board may have been able to preserve OKR, but I'll leave that to them to describe since I haven't done it.
Long way of leading up to the question: is it sufficient to run Linux in a virtual machine, or as a WUBI install within windows? That keeps things simple and makes backups much easier as well.
Whatever you do, burn your recovery media first. Now.
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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DUAL BOOT windows 7 and linux HELP with Current info on BIOS, MBR vs GPT, etc

I have a feeling this should be easier than what I'm making it. Please educate me on Lenovo's BIOS Setup menus, etc.
I have installed easyBCD in Windows 7, and plan to use it to set up my new boot menu with Linux Mint (and possibly other distros).
I am using a live DVD. I inserted the DVD and went into SETUP and selected to boot off the DVD drive. It started to boot into Linux and all was going well.
However, I realized that I had not checked on the Secure features (Secure Boot, EFI). So I shutdown again and went into BIOS. I went to the SECURITY menu and Disabled UEFI. Then I disabled Secure boot.
Tried to boot off the DVD and couldn't get anywhere. Kept putting me back into the window to select the boot device over and over again. THought I'd ruined my machine
Anyway, finally stumbled upon STARTUP menu, and put it into EFI Legacy, and I was able to get back into Windows 7.
Obviously before I pursue this further, I need some educaiton on your MENUS, Lenovo and EFI/Secure Boot.
I have a feeling that I can probably now install the Linux but want to make sure my settings are correct before I pursue.
Thanks, Kim
Moderator note: this thread gets more Linux-flavored with each post Moved from the "T" board to the Linux board.

Hi, thanks for ans. Your specs are almost identical to my T530 ,which I should have listed. The only diff is
I have an i7 35something processor. Same intel card, RAM and HDD, not that that should matter I'm guessing.
I purposely avoided the Nvidia card because of all the heaadaches with Nvidia.
I have to teach a class tomorrow and I need to clean up my notes. (Definitely not computer related...LOL.) I don't want to be stressed out about this during class, so I plan to wait to attempt a new install tomorrow afternoon.
What I have done is find out some more info about dual booting with windows 7. I went in to windows 7 to shrink the C: partiition and it said I'd have to reserve at least 220 GB for MS! Not what I wanted; I don't really care a thing for MS. I was born and raised on Unix and Linux; I never really fiddled with MS after the demise of MS-DOS during my college days.
Given that, and the fact that I'd lose half my 500 GB HDD to the Borg, I may just chuck the entire dual boot thing and just load Linux on it.
If you say you're running Linux on it just fine, that would be a great encouragement. No HW problems at all? Everything working fine? Which distro are you using?
I plan to test Mint, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Mageira (sp?), saybahon (sp again?), Debian Wheezy, and even Pear, LOL. I'll keep trying till I find a distro to run on my Lenovo T530, but I'm guessing all of 'em should do okay.
I have Lubuntu I could give a spin, as well and Crunchbang and Bodhi, but they're all 32 bit. (I have an antique Dell desktop that I still use down in my woman cave.)

DUAL BOOT windows 7 and linux HELP

MASTERS
im planing to have windows 7 and linux at the same time (DUAL BOOT)
but i dont know if one key recovery still works after installation
ihave lenovo g560
i3 @ 2.53
4gb ram
any advice guys?

hi botards01,
If you're planning to use linux occasionally (Ubuntu for example) and you don't want to risk losing the One Key Recovery functionality, try to install Ubuntu via Wubi as this doesn't repartition your HDD but creates a virtual disk on your current OS.
Check it out - Install Ubuntu in Windows With Wubi
Hope this helps
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G780: dual boot Win 7 and Linux

I have a G780 with win7 pre-installed. When I tried to get GNU/Linux Mint Dual-booting, the wifi-driver didn't work and most importantly, I wasn't able to make a new partition because there were already four: the boot-partition, the windows-partition, one labeled "Lenovo" and one "Lenovo2" (or something like this). The hard-disk is formatted in a way so that only four partitions are allowed.
Does anyone have an idea how to solve those problems?
Moderator note: off-topic post moved to its own thread. Subject edited to match content. Was: Re: Dual booting pre-installed Windows 8 and Linux?

Hi Zoltan.
You'll need to operate on the partitions with gparted. It uses its own partition table type, gpt, instead of the DOS partition type, which limits the number of primary partions to four.
I believe that Mint comes with gparted, but you can boot gparted from a live cd or usb. With it you can shrink the Windoze partition to create root, swap and home partitions.
Regards,
KD

Imaging a dual boot system - Windows and Linux

Using Zenworks 7, I have tried several experiments and all of them seem to
fail. If I do any kind of Windows install, then make a image, then restore
the image, it works just fine. However, if I also install Linux, and use the
Linux multiboot menu, and save an image, when I restore the image, only
Windows can be accessed, the boot menu is gone. I also noticed that if I
try to make an image of Suse 10.2, when I re-image the system back to Suse
10.2, it constantly reboots or only gives me a GRUB prompt and nothing else.
Is there a parameter or switch someplace in Zenworks to make sure it
includes Sector 0, 1 ,5 ,6, etc. etc.?
Also, I noticed something else. If it is a windows only system, and I have a
second partition which is hidden that I keep a ghost image in, and I have a
ZEN image of this system; If I re-image via ZEN, all the data is there, but
for some reason, the second hidden partition is no longer hidden. Other
than that, it works fine.

It is ZFD. I'll take it over there..Thanks
"brunold" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]..
>
> Eric,
>
> do you use zen for desktops or zen linux management for imaging that
> dual boot machine ? It sounds like zfd so this topic might be covered
> better in that forum.
>
> Rainer
>
>
> --
> brunold
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> brunold's Profile: http://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=562
> View this thread: http://forums.novell.com/showthread.php?t=323281
>

Dual booting in Windows and Linux, but only Linux has calendar, TB 31.0

I'm dual booting using Linux Mint and Windows 7. I have TB 31.0 installed in each OS. TB in Linux has calendar capability; in Windows, there's nothing (by nothing, I mean no calendars - I can't see their properties, for instance, nor access them in any way).
I should add that both Windows and Linux TB programs are sharing the same profile folder (located on a separate partition), hence, all the same add-ons, passwords, etc.
The error console logs the following:
Timestamp: 14/08/2014 6:41:33 PM
Error: Components.classes[cid] is undefined
Source File: resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm -> file:///P:/PortableApps/ThunderbirdPortable/Data/profile/extensions/%7Be2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103%7D/calendar-js/calUtils.js
Line: 17
There are a variety of flow on errors, related to this.
My apologies for posting this in this way; I had intended to submit this via the crashreporter, but I'm having trouble getting the program to crash with this error just now.

A reply to my own question: it turns out that while sharing a profile works pretty well for most purposes, with Lightning it does not, as the extension has different Linux and Windows versions. The problem is solved quite simply: by not using the same profile for each version.
Glad to see that no one wasted time on this one (except me, of course).

Dual booting Windows 8 and Arch Linux with UEFI

Hi all!
I'm trying to install Arch Linux on my computer where I already have Windows 8, and I'm getting a little stuck when it comes to the partitioning.
Following the beginner's guide and the method here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … n_in_Linux for setting up the partitions properly, regarding UEFI. My problem is that when using cgdisk to set up a new EFI system partition (ef00), I get an error message when trying to write the partition table (just saying that something went wrong). I figure the problem is that I already have a partition like this (correct me if I'm wrong), but it really looks like it succeded (see info below). So my question is: How do I preceed to keep my Windows 8 installation happy, but installing Arch? Do I remove the old EFI system partition and create a new one, or is there some method that allows me to edit the already existing one, to allow me to dual boot Windows 8 and Arch?
My partition table now looks like this:
Part. # Size Partition Type Partition Name
1007KB free space
1 500MB Windows RE Basic data partition
2 300MB EFI System EFI system partition (this one was already present on my system)
3 128MB Microsoft reserved Microsoft reserved partition
4 63.5GB Microsoft basic data Basic data partition
8 512MB EFI System EFI System partition (this is the one I tried to create when I got the error message)
5 29.5GB Linux filesystem Arch (this is where I was going to put my Arch installation)
6 22GB Windows RE Basic data partition
7 1024MB Windows RE Basic data partition
615KB free space
Just for the record; I only created partition #8 and #5.
Any help is appreciated! And sorry for beeing a total noob, but I really suck at this.

sudo make sandwich wrote:If it is possible to share ESP between OSes, how do I do this (would it be sufficent to follow this section: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide#For_UEFI_motherboards)?
There's really very little to do to share an ESP between OSes. Most OS installers will auto-detect the ESP and use it. Problem solved. For Arch it may be a bit more effort just because Arch uses a more hands-on installation process, but I've only done a couple of Arch installations, and the last one was several months ago, so I don't recall the details clearly enough to comment.
And how big will the partition need to be? The beginner's guide says 512MB or higher.
I don't know what was in the mind of the author, but my guess is that's because that's roughly the cutoff point where mkdosfs starts creating FAT32 by default rather than FAT16. The ESP is officially supposed to be FAT32, not FAT16, although FAT16 usually works OK. It's also possible to create FAT32 on smaller partitions by using an explicit option to mkdosfs ("-F 32").
The optimal size of the ESP depends on the files stored on it. If you don't store your Linux kernels, something as small as 100MiB is usually adequate; but a few Linux kernels and their initrd files can consume twice that amount. My own recommendation is for the ESP to be 200-500MiB.
The only error message I got from cgdisk is "Problem saving data! Your partition table may be damaged!", however booting Windows again works fine. Parted did not complain about antything.
Use the "verify" function in cgdisk. That will reveal any problems with the data structures. If a verify turns up OK, then that means that cgdisk ran into some sort of disk problem. Running gdisk rather than cgdisk and using the gdisk "w" option (without making any changes) may produce a more helpful error message.

[SOLVED] Dual boot windows 7 and arch Linux with seperate hard drives

Ok so I'm stuck trying to get my computer to dual boot windows 7 and arch. They are installed on different hard drives and I have grub 2 as the boot loader. I can't find any tutorials on how to do it with seperate hard drives I know how to do it if they are on the same hard drive. Also I want windows on the "first" hard drive how do I check to see which one it considers the first?
Last edited by bdawg (2012-09-21 23:15:37)

DSpider wrote:
drobole wrote:If you want to change it so that sda becomes sdb and sdb becomes sda, you should be able to do that in BIOS.
Not from the BIOS. He would need to physically open up the computer and switch the cables between them (or add another drive).
There's no actual performance increase in changing this order. Performance increase is when you have the partitions as close to the beginning of a HDD as possible, where the platters spin faster (basic mechanics, not to be confused with CD/DVD, which are being written from the inside-out to prevent errors after extended usage), and it especially doesn't apply to SSDs whatsoever.
You may be right about that. I remember I had to do this a while back but I probably switched the cables. It also messed up the drive mapping in Windows 98 if I remember correctly.

Dual boot Windows 7 and Arch from 2 seperate drives (UEFI)

Hello everyone, I've been working on installing Arch to a secondary hard drive for the past few hours, but I am trying to make sure I won't mess up my Windows 7 install. I have found several topics talking about dual booting Windows 7 and Arch, but not a whole lot on booting them from separate drives. My drives are currently setup as follows.
sda (120GB SSD for Windows 7)
sda1 (100MB System Reserved NTFS partition)
sda2 (Windows 7 install)
sdb (1TB HDD for Windows programs, files, etc)
sdb1 (1TB NTFS partition)
sdc (1TB HDD)
sdc1 (boot 512MB FAT32)
sdc2 (root 500MB ext4)
sdc3 (home 300GB ext4)
sdc4 (swap 10GB)
rest unallocated "free space"
I used Gparted to create the partitions. I ended up getting hung up on the "Create Filesystems" sections, specifically this line"
# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdXY
Now that I am looking at it, I'm thinking the "Create Filesystems" section maybe isn't necessary because I've used Gparted?
If it isn't necessary, when I get to the "mount the EFI System Partition to /boot" section, would I simply use
# mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot
instead of
# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/boot ?
The way I had this setup with Ubuntu was 3 partitions on sdc (/, home, swap) and I set my PC to boot to the sdc drive on startup. The boot loader would then give me the option to boot into Ubuntu or Windows 7, and I never had to alter the sda or sdb drives at all. Is this possible through Arch? My thinking is that even if it isn't, I should still be able to enter the BIOS boot menu and select which drive to boot manually correct? That wouldn't be too big of a deal for me because I spend 90% of my time in Linux, and only use Windows for Photoshop and gaming occasionally.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I would have just tested this out, but I am afraid of messing up my Windows install.

After several sleepless hours I had to give up and go to bed about 5 hours ago. The installation process went smoothly (or so I thought). I followed the tutorial closely and upon rebooting I was met with a blinking cursor. After some googling I found others who said I should press TAB, but nothing seemed to work.
I rebooted to the iso disk and found the "boot installed OS" option and noticed it said "Press TAB to edit". I then found the boot parameters and tried everything from hd0 0 to hd4 4. I believe I have Grub setup correctly because every option besides hd0 0 either says "Booting..." and then gets stuck, or says "That disk and partition combination does not exist". So yea, I think hd0 0 is the correct boot path, it just gets stuck with the blinking cursor.
silverhammermba wrote:
You have the right idea. You want to install a bootloader on sdc1 which will be able to boot both Arch and Windows.
Your best bet would be to use something like rEFInd. It has a "scanfor" option that should automatically detect your BIOS-configured Windows installation and add a boot option for it. Note that depending on your motherboard, you may have to switch to UEFI-only mode and Windows will be unbootable without the assistance of a UEFI program which is backwards compatible with BIOS (like rEFInd).
Thank you for the link. Considering I can't get into my install and the actual install only took about 30 minutes, I think I am going to just start from the beginning again with REFIndr. It seems much simpler. I only used Grub because I've used it before with Ubuntu, but my very limited knowledge is telling me Grub is probably the problem.
MoonSwan wrote:Just an idea: My bios has a "Boot-up Prompt" which I can invoke when it's POSTing by hitting F11. This brings me to a menu that allows me to choose which drive I want to boot up that day. I use it when Syslinux isn't working properly (Which is right now as a matter of fact ...) in order to boot Windows so I can do some SCII, for example. I, too, dual-boot but I have both OSes on different SSDs. So my 120GB Crucial SSD has Arch on it and the 240GB Kingston has Windows, SCII, Portable Apps, etc and nary the two shall meet. It makes dual-booting easier in the case of a corrupt OS or MBR or what-have-you. You may want to give your Bios a better look to see if you can do the F11 trick. It probably can and will usually tell you so at POST by printing that information on-screen along with your drives-detected and other messages (I hit Pause sometimes to read all the POST messages).
This is exactly what I was talking about doing when I mentioned:
My thinking is that even if it isn't, I should still be able to enter the BIOS boot menu and select which drive to boot manually correct?
That's good to know, because even if this next install doesn't work I think if I pull the other drives I should be able to get it working fairly easily.
Thanks again everyone.

Dual Boot Windows 7 and Arch with Shared NTFS partition.

Hi everyone,
I want to dual boot windows 7 and Arch Linux.
Here's the problem... my hard drive isn't the biggest. I want to store all my music, movies, pictures, and documents on partition that both linux and windows can access seamlessly.
I want the partition to be NTFS. -- (the programs that map an ext4 drive to Windows are trash).
Here's what I think I need.
30GB NTFS to Windows.
30GB ext4 to Arch Linux
The remainder (190ish GB) to Shared Data.
I don't want the swap partition because I have a SSD and 4GB of RAM.
What is the best way to setup my partitions? And is this even possible?
Thanks!

Not a problem. I would create:
First of four primary partitions for windows.
Second of four primary partitions for /boot
Third of four partitions is an extended partition encompassing all the space not used by the first two partitions.
Put everything else inside the extended partition.
Mine is a bit more complicated, but this should give you an idea:
ewaller@odin:~ 1005 %sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Password:
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x87b33479
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 121778159 60888056 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 597366784 625135615 13884416 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 121778160 597366783 237794312 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 121778223 123770219 995998+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 123770283 131770589 4000153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 193213818 597360959 202073571 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 131781258 193213754 30716248+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 131770591 131781194 5302 1 FAT12
Partition table entries are not in disk order
ewaller@odin:~ 1006 %
Partitions 1 and 2 are Primary partitions. Partition 3 is an extended partition. All the others live in partition 3

Dual booting win 7 and arch: cannot install grub to partition

I have read the arch wiki page on dual booting and several other sources on line, but I am still struggling to get this to work.
I am trying to dual boot arch and windows 7 on my lenovo ideapad s205. the machine comes with windows 7 pre-installed.
I shrank the win 7 partition and added an extended partition with 3 logical partions for /boot, swap, and /.
I am able to install and run arch by installing grub to the mbr. when I do this, though, I cannot boot windows. (the windows section of grub menu.lst is uncommented and points toward hda0,0. I have tried hda 0,1 as well).
I have also tried to use the windows boot loader to load arch, as described in the arch wiki page on dual booting. The problem here is that, taking this approach, I should install grub to my /boot partition, but when I try to do this, the installer only allows me to install grub to sda or sdb (the usb stick).
I have read that grub should be able to boot linux from a logical partition. Is this so?
Is there something wrong with the arch installer that it is not giving me the option of installing to a partition rather than the mbr, or is this a problem with my partition scheme, or something else?
I am tempted to remove lenovo's recovery system, but on the other hand, I have already needed to use it several times while monkeying around with installing arch.
Thanks for any help.
UPDATE:
I now have the laptop dual-booting win 7 and arch. My solution ( adapted from here: http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/?p=177) was to:
1. installed arch on the partitions I had created for it, but skipped the "install bootloader" stage.
2. in win 7, I downloaded and installed EasyBCD and made an entry for arch in it. I checked the option to "Use EasyBCD's copy of GRUB"
3. When I restarted, I got a grub error because the entry in grub's menu.lst was pointing at the wrong partitions for the kernel and root.
4. So I went back into the arch live disk, mounted the boot partition and edited menu.lst.
Now when I start the laptop, the windows boot loader starts and I can choose between win 7 and arch. when I select arch, grub4dos starts and gives me the option to start arch. this is not particularly elegant (nor is it fast), so I think this solution is less than ideal, but it does work.
I'd be interestd in any thoughts about what went wrong and what a better solution would be.
thanks.
Last edited by ratchet (2011-10-10 19:09:16)

ratchet wrote:II am able to install and run arch by installing grub to the mbr. when I do this, though, I cannot boot windows. (the windows section of grub menu.lst is uncommented and points toward hda0,0. I have tried hda 0,1 as well).
Is this a typo in your post or how it was in menu.lst? Surely it should be hd0,0 and not hda0,0? The entry I have in my menu.lst is as follows:
# (2) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
What was yours?
Last edited by JHeaton (2011-10-10 20:18:22)

Thinkpad x130e dual boot Win 7 and 8

So, I bought a new Seagate SSD Hybrid drive with the intention of dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8. However, upon using my restore DVD's to reinstall Windows 7 on the new drive I hit a snag when trying to install Windows 8. The Win8 intall says that the drive needs to be GPT and it is currently MBR. So after removing the partitions and changing the drive to GPT I re-restore the Win7 OS. Then to my dismay I find that the drive has gone back to MBR during the restore proceedure.
Is there a way to edit the restore proceedure so that it doesn't change the drive over to an MBR drive?
Thanks,
Matt

the Arch partition should take some space from the windows7_os partition. You should keep the Lenovo_Recovery partition if you don't have a Windows installation DVD, or if you think you may want to reset your hard drive to its original state someday. In my laptop I have completely removed it.
I have a dual boot of Archlinux/Windows7, and I use the following partitioning
/dev/sda1 ntfs 60.0GiB /media/C (for windows os)
/dev/sda2 (extended partition)
/dev/sda3 swap 4.0GiB swap
/dev/sda4 ext4 30.0GiB root
/dev/sda5 ext4 30.0GiB home
/dev/sda6 ntfs 376GiB /media/D
I use the last partition as a shared partition between Arch and Windows, for storing music and videos... I use it also for installing games, so that I can play them either from windows or from Arch by using wine.
I'm not saying this is the best way to do it, but this has been working for me, also I don't use a separate /boot partition, I used to have it when I had multiple Linux distros, but with Arch alone I don't find it necessary.

Dual Boot OS X and Linux

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