Dual Booting Windows 7/8 - Two Separate Hard Drives App to Change Default OS

Hi Guys
I would like to make an app to change the default OS to boot to so users can run a desktop app on either os to restart and boot to the other one hopefully by just changing the registry
The win 7 ssd is efi the win 8.1 also but only 1 partition win 7 is disk 0 with the efi part
If its possible via altering a reg key where would i find it ?
Chris Cullen

Hi,
The dual boot information is stored in the bcd file in the system reserved partition, also, you can see the boot option by typing “msconfig” at the command line window, there will be two options if you have two systems
installed on your computer:
You can set one as the default boot system, the boot information isn’t stored in the registry key, so, I am afraid altering the registry won’t help.
Regards
Wade Liu
TechNet Community Support

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Possible to dual boot two separate hard drives?

I just bought a new SSD for my Mac Pro 5.1 and I want to install Windows 7 (x64).
I currently have a dual boot (using Boot Camp) on the hard drive that came with the computer (1TB) with Mountain Lion (OSX) and Windows 7 64 and it is working flawlessly.
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Please help!

sure my boot camp menu sees all hd's connected as possible targets

Dual boot windows 7+archlinux on separate disks; grub errors. [solved]

Hello,
I am very excited to try arch linux, but am having trouble with the
installation. My situation is as follows: I have 3 hard drives: windows 7
lives on sda and sdb. I am installing arch on sdc, which is 500GB.
I partitioned the hard drive as follows (which may look kind of ridiculous,
but please understand I am new at this):
sdc1 /boot 1GB ext2
sdc2 swap 8GB swap
sdc3 / 50GB ext3
sdc4 /home 400+GB ext3
After some initial issues, I managed to run the installation program
smoothly, performed the basic configuration, and then went to install grub. I
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title: Arch Linux
root: (hd2,0)
kernel: /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdc3 ro
initrd: /kernel26.img
There is no entry for windows, as I can just use the BIOS boot menu to switch
between the two bootable hard disks, or at least that was my plan...
When I boot to windows, everything works just fine. When I go to the
BIOS boot menu and choose to boot from the third disk, I get the grub
bootloader with choices of arch and arch fallback, just as expected.
I select the former, and I get the following message from grub:
Booting 'Arch Linux'
root hd(2,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdc3 ro
Error17: cannot mount selected partition
The same thing happens for the fallback image. I made very sure to install
grub to the mbr, /dev/sdc.
I have also tried to use the UUID entry for /root in the menu.lst file, and
this gives the exact same results. I have also run grub interactively from
the bootable CD image, and it does not give such errors- it knows that
hd(2,0) has type 82, and not 7. However, when I try the initrd command in
interactive grub, I get a complaint about the image not fitting in memory.
However, I have 16GB of ram...
One other note that may be (but probably is not) relevant: initially I could
not get the Arch disk to recognize the hard drive (the format disk phase of
installation would always fail), so from windows, I went to the disk manager
and formatted it with ntfs. This enabled me to format the disk from the arch
install process and install the new FS. I didn't think the temporary presence
of ntfs would be any kind of an issue since I immediately reformatted it.
Many thanks for your time reading this. Much appreciated.
Last edited by wes (2011-03-07 21:24:44)

I guess here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … Bootloader
or here
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … ard_Drives
would be sensible places, but as a complete rookie, I don't feel qualified to start editing the wiki...

How to install Arch for dual-boot with Win 7 (on 2 hard drives)?

Hello,
the TLDR first: how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for 2 hard drives to dual-boot Arch (64 bit)and Win 7 (64 bit)?
Long version: So, I have the following hard drive & partition layout:
On my first hard drive (250 GB big) I have: Win 7 64 bit, all the programs for Windows and of course the EFI partition
My second hard drive is 1 TB big and formatted in NTFS and it only contains data. It has 2 partitions, one is about 750 GB big and used for simple storage.
Sidenote 1: sometimes my disk management (Windows' own gparted) shows either the little disk or the big one as disk 0. Don't know what exactly this means, but I have never ever experienced any problems whatsoever during use.
Sidenote 2: the UEFI motherboard (ASRock H67M) cannot boot into Legacy mode.
I want to install Arch on a ~200 GB partition on the second hard drive (the one with 1 TB). (click here if you want to see a screenshot) I am posting this because I am confused with how exactly I should deal with the whole "2 hdds & UEFI" thing.
So how exactly should I proceed when setting up GRUB for this setup?
For partitioning I suppose I would have to use fdisk or cgdisk. I used cgdisk before and found it to be straightforward. Then, because I have experienced my fair share of problems with rEFInd, I'd like to use GRUB.
Last edited by jones (2013-06-29 14:36:56)

First thing you should do is become familiar with your motherboard.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/manual.asp?Model=H67M
This will probably help you out in understanding the sidenote 1 thingie (hdd's on sata3 and/or sata2 connectors)
As on sidenote 2, according to the manual it seems to be possible to boot legacy mode, see Storage Configuration.

Can I transfer Time Machine data from two separate hard drives into one new one?

I'm using a MacBook Pro as my primary computer. My 500 gig Time Capsule filled up a year or so ago, so I stopped using it with Time Machine for awhile so I could keep the data from those old back-ups. There were a number of things I deleted from my computer's very limited hard drive after they were backed up to the Time Capsule. I got a 1T external USB drive last year to use as my "filing Cabinet" to store files I didn't necessarily need all the time or that were filling up my small laptop hard drive--including my iTunes library--all organized in a way that made it relatively easy for me to find what I needed, even if I didn't remember exactly when I'd filed it or what I'd called it. I got another 1 terabyte external (portable) drive last July and dedicated it to TimeMachine backups and labeled it "TimeMachine".
Over the last couple of weeks, my friend has been helping me upgrade to Yosemite and clean up my laptop hard drive. Last week he cloned my laptop hard drive to a new 1T hard drive and I exchanged it for my old drive in my computer today. All good.
Here's the issue. We replaced my Time Capsule hard drive with a 1 terabyte drive with the idea of transferring the data from the old Time Capsule (500G) drive and the newer USB 1T "TimeMachine" compact drive to the new 1T Time Capsule drive and beginning using the latter for my Time Machine backups going forward. Originally he thought we could copy everything from each of my external drives (the old 500gig drive from my Time Capsule, the USB "TimeMachine" drive I've been using since July, and the "file cabinet" files) to my computer in their own folders and then start regular TimeMachine backups to the new Time Capsule drive, thus preserving all my old data and making regular backups going forward. The "file cabinet" data was no problem at all, but when I tried to copy my USB "TimeMachine" data to my computer, I was unable to. My friend found instructions for transferring old TimeMachine data to a new TimeCapsule, but I don't know if I can transfer the data from two separate disks to the new TimeCapsule drive. I'm afraid that one set of data will supersede the other and either my newer backups or my old ones will be lost if I try to transfer both.
Are my fears justified or is there a way to insure that no such problem will occur? Of course, my data will still be on those two older drives, but that won't do me a lot of good if I can't access it when I need to. Also, the 1T drive now belongs to my friend; he used a brand new drive he'd bought for himself for my new internal hard drive and plans to take my 1T "TimeCapsule" drive in exchange, once the data has been transferred, so he will, of course, erase that drive.

Should we be able to bring up the old (500G) Time Capsule Drive to rename it using a SATA to FireWire harness and then copy the whole thing to the new Time Capsule drive?
You can copy a whole sparsebundle from one drive to another. That is not a problem. Whether you can access the sparsebundle is something you should test before you even start though.
If it's on the Desktop and I don't tell Time Machine to exclude it from backups, will it just automatically back it up?
All drives you plug into the Mac are excluded by default.. you must include them. So no problems there.. but I hope I am understanding the question.
Will both volumes or directories (which is the right term?) show up when I open Time Machine?
No, Time Machine will only open what it is told to open... or its backup default location.
You can force Time Machine to open alternative/old/no longer used backups by (now I have a problem as things have changed somewhat in Yosemite and I consider it alpha release software at this point in time). The old method was to right click on the TM icon and select a different TM backup. easy. Yosemite seems to have made easy stuff harder.
Here it is on my current computer.. clearly not Yosemite.. Right click on the TM icon in the dock.. select Browse Other Time Machine Disks.. And supply the info of where that is located. Easy. If you cannot figure it out one of the other posters here (with more patience than me for Yosemite) will help you.
Or will we have to partition the new drive somehow--is that even possible?
I am getting more lost as I go down the list.. but the TC disk cannot be partitioned.
If you have included all those USB drives in the new backup on a Time a Time Capsule.. you have made life rather hard because now your files are stored another layer deeper than they were.
So to open a file from a disk you need to open the sparsebundle.. then dig down to the drive in question and then dig down to the backup.. and all of this means Time Machine has to work perfectly which is Yosemite is a very big ask.
I thought you wanted to just backup your old drives to central location.. which means copying the files to a separate folder on the Time Capsule.
One correction I need to make to my post, which will make my strategy make a bit more sense: my new Time Capsule drive is 4T
It makes it much harder.. and I have to pose a real question of long term .. if you have put a 4TB drive in a Gen1 TC.. did you also replace its power supply because I can assure you the drive might be ok but the TC itself will not last forever.. and what happens when it dies. The Gen1 power supply is already well beyond its normal life span and the vast majority are dead. When the backup device is unreliable and the backups on it are made that much harder to get access to.. is this a great plan??
If you are going to consolidate all your old files on one disk.. a task I find understandable. I have done much the same albeit the usefulness of files made on emac running OS9 may be questioned. A disk lying in the bottom of a draw is a more appropriate place for them.
You want those files as easily accessible as possible (at the point of recovery) and not buried inside a sparsebundle.. particularly not a sparsebundle from the old TC disk buried inside a new sparsebundle.. keep files as accessible as possible as you can run searches.. and that is best done on a USB 3 (or faster ie thunderbolt) drive plugged into a new(ish) computer.. not network. And since the files are not being accessed on a daily/weekly or even monthly or yearly basis.. keeping them in actively running TC network storage.. I would say is a waste of space. That is only my opinion of course.. you might consider it highly important that files you will never look at are available any time of day or night when the urge comes to track down that elusive pimpernel email you sent 10 years ago... but I find it hard to justify. What the case.. the problem with TM and things like Mail is you cannot search it.. you must restore the whole library/files/program even before you can access it.. that makes file recovery out of a sparsebundle double step process.
So.. summary.
If you want to store files on the 4TB drive in the TC.. that is not a great strategy but it can work.. simply create a folder named.. OldFilesEMac for instance.. and do a simple copy and paste of all the file to that location. Do not use TM.. Since you have already used TM.. and from what I am reading you have already done the backup with the external drives included.. then you are going to end up needing to erase the TC and start over.. which you may not be prepared to do.. which is fair enough. (I am coming across as overbearing school master.. apologies).
TM is to backup your main OS and current files.. not files from 10-20years ago.
Please do read the issues involved in Pondini..
See his FAQ. I recommend you read through Q14-17 so you understand what is involved in recovery.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I also recommend you read the first couple of articles here. http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
Particularly so you understand the complexity of Time Machine.
And the articles here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Particularly Q3 on mixing data and backups on a TC.
I wish I could spend an hour or two face to face and work it out.. the whole strategy to do this.. !!

Boot Camp / Windows Partion... Can it be installed on a separate hard drive

I am just beginning to explore the idea of installing Boot Camp & Windows on a new Intel Mac I will be buying. I've been reading a lot of references to the Windows partition...
Can I dedicate a separate hard drive to Windows rather than partition my primary hard drive? If so would it be best to use an internal drive rather than a Firewire or USB drive. What would a reasonable minimum drive size be?
Thanks for you feedback.
Mike

Hi Mike,
since only the Mac Pro can have more than one internal HD, I assume you are talking about getting one of them
With more than one internal HDs you can put Windows on the second, third, fourth internal HD with the BootCamp Assistant.
On a side note: Windows does not support to be booted from external HDs (neither FireWire nor USB).
Reasonable size depends on what you want to do with it.
Windows XP itself takes up to 3.5GB of HD space after installation, Vista takes up to 10GB.
Add to that the HD space you need for the programs and data you use/produce.
And when keeping in mind the hassle it takes to enlarge the Windows partition if needed, my personal suggestions are:
Windows XP at least 30GB, Vista at least 50GB.
Have you already had a look here http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/ especially at the Installation Guide ?
Regards
Stefan

[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 booting Windows 7 and Vista on dv9620 on dual hard drives

Hi this might look like a repeat question but i haven't seen it answered by anyone that has tried it.
I downloaded the release candidate of Windows 7 and i want to dual boot it on my notebook.
The drives I have available are Disc0 which holds C: (the drive running Vista) and E: the HP_Recovery partition.
Then I have Disc1 which holds D: the Data drive and nothing else.
I want to run Windows 7 on the D: drive So can anyone who has done this tell me how they did it? Most of the dual booting how to's I've seen are for for booting on seperate partitions a single hard drive and because i'm something of a novice to this I would like some advice with more reference to my situation.

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 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.

Advice on dual-booting Windows 7 with UEFI motherboard

I'm going to build a desktop PC tomorrow, having finally purchased all the parts for it. I'll be installing Arch as my main OS, and Windows for gaming. However I'm not really versed in UEFI and its uses, advantages/disadvantages; since my laptop just uses BIOS.
My plan is to have 3 drives: 32GB SSD for the / partition, 1TB HDD for /home, and 500GB for Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.
Being unused to UEFI I was thinking about trying to just run everything in BIOS/Legacy mode, but that doesn't seem very sensible to me, especially since I have the hardware so I might as well use it.
So, reading the wiki and forums have led me to conclude that having a 1GB EFI System Partition on the SSD should be sufficient, and use gummiboot for my bootloader.
Other reading about setting up dual boots suggests to me that installing Windows 7 on its own HDD with MBR partitioning and Arch on a separate (set of) drive(s) with GPT partitioning will be sufficient. The reason being that if the BIOS is set up to boot sda, which has GRUB as its bootloader, using GRUB I can choose to boot into Windows despite it being on a separate hard drive.
My questions are (and it occurs to me that I am in the most part just looking to have my ideas confirmed):
1. Have I gotten this all completely wrong?
2. If I'm correct, can the above system of using GRUB on one drive to boot up an OS on another drive be applied to UEFI?
3. Has anybody tried/succeeded/failed to dual-boot in this fashion before me, and if so what did they do?
Thanks one and all! Hopefully I've made myself clear enough here

billodwyer wrote:Being unused to UEFI I was thinking about trying to just run everything in BIOS/Legacy mode, but that doesn't seem very sensible to me, especially since I have the hardware so I might as well use it.
Using BIOS/CSM/legacy mode can work fine; however, it will probably slow down the boot process by a few seconds, and it will close off some possible future (and even current) advantages, as EFI support in Linux is improved.
So, reading the wiki and forums have led me to conclude that having a 1GB EFI System Partition on the SSD should be sufficient, and use gummiboot for my bootloader.
A 1GB ESP is more than sufficient. In terms of space requirements, 100-500MB is enough, depending on how you use the ESP; but various bugs and default settings make me recommend 550MiB as a good size. Bigger is OK, but wastes some disk space.
A bigger issue is that the ESP won't really benefit much from being on your SSD, since it's read once at boot time. The biggest advantage to putting the ESP on the SSD in your setup is that if you use gummiboot, you'll also have to put the Linux kernel and initrd file on the ESP, so having them on an SSD will speed up the boot process by about 1-5 seconds. Overall, I'd probably put the ESP on one of the spinning disks.
One more comment: gummiboot can launch boot loaders from its own partition but not from other partitions. This can work fine if you plan things carefully, but with three disks and two OSes, you must be absolutely positive that Windows uses the ESP on which gummiboot is installed. I'm not an expert on Windows installation, so I can't offer any specific pointers or caveats on this. If you need something with more flexibility, both rEFInd and GRUB can redirect the boot process to other partitions or physical disks. rEFInd can also redirect from an EFI-mode boot to a BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode boot. (See below.) Overall, rEFInd's flexibility on this score is a plus compared to gummiboot; but gummiboot is covered in the Arch wiki's beginner's guide, which is a plus. You'll have to pick which advantage you prefer. (Note that I'm rEFInd's maintainer, so I'm not unbiased.)
Other reading about setting up dual boots suggests to me that installing Windows 7 on its own HDD with MBR partitioning and Arch on a separate (set of) drive(s) with GPT partitioning will be sufficient. The reason being that if the BIOS is set up to boot sda, which has GRUB as its bootloader, using GRUB I can choose to boot into Windows despite it being on a separate hard drive.
This is an unworkable idea, at least as stated and if you want to do an EFI-mode boot. Windows ties the partition table type to the boot mode: Windows boots from MBR disks only in BIOS mode, and from GPT disks only in EFI mode. Thus, using MBR for the Windows disk will require a BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode installation of Windows. Furthermore, neither gummiboot nor GRUB can redirect from EFI mode to BIOS mode (or vice-versa), so if you do it this way, you'll be forcing yourself to boot Linux in BIOS mode, to switch between BIOS-mode and EFI-mode boots at the firmware level (which isn't always easily controlled), or to use rEFInd to redirect from an EFI-mode boot to a BIOS-mode Windows boot.
Overall, you're best off either using GPT for all your disks and booting all your OSes in EFI mode or using MBR for Windows (and perhaps all your disks) and using BIOS-mode booting for all your OSes.
Under EFI, the boot process is controlled by settings in the NVRAM, which you can adjust with "efibootmgr" in Linux, "bcfg" in an EFI shell, or "bcdedit" in Windows. (The Arch wiki covers the basics at least efibootmgr and bcfg.) In a typical dual-boot setup, you tell the computer to launch your preferred boot manager (EFI-mode GRUB, rEFInd, or gummiboot, most commonly), which then controls the boot process. You set up boot loaders for all your OSes on one or more ESPs. (Note: A boot manager lets you choose which boot loader to run, and a boot loader loads the kernel into memory. GRUB is both a boot manager and a boot loader. rEFInd and gummiboot are both boot managers. The EFI stub loader, ELILO, and the EFI version of SYSLINUX are all boot loaders but not boot managers. Most EFIs include their own boot manager, but it's usually primitive and awkward to use. It's also not standardized, so my computer's built-in boot manager is likely to be different from yours. Thus, I recommend against relying on the built-in boot manager for anything but launching your preferred boot manager.) Thus, the lowest-common-denominator type of setup is to put your preferred boot manager, the Windows boot loader, and a Linux boot loader (which could mean your Linux kernel) on a single ESP. If you want to use multiple ESPs or otherwise split things up, you cannot use gummiboot as the boot manager, since it can't redirect the boot process from one partition to another. (Many EFIs can do this with their own built-in boot managers, but this isn't guaranteed, and it's usually more awkward than using rEFInd or GRUB.)
I know this can be a lot to absorb. The official rules aren't really all that complex, but different EFIs interpret the rules differently, and the different capabilities of the various boot managers and boot loaders creates a lot of subtle implications for how you set everything up.
1. Have I gotten this all completely wrong?
Significant parts of it, I'm afraid; see above. You're working under BIOS assumptions, which don't apply to EFI.
2. If I'm correct, can the above system of using GRUB on one drive to boot up an OS on another drive be applied to UEFI?
GRUB can do this, but gummiboot can't. You set one of those (or something else, like rEFInd) as your primary boot manager. Using both GRUB and gummiboot adds unnecessary complexity, IMHO. OTOH, setting up multiple boot managers or boot loaders is possible, and can give you a fallback in case one fails. For instance, there's a known bug that affects 3.7 and later kernels, mostly on Lenovo computers, that causes the EFI stub loader to fail sometimes. Thus, if you use rEFInd, gummiboot, or the EFI's own boot manager to launch the kernel via the EFI stub loader, having GRUB, ELILO, or SYSLINUX set up as a fallback can provide helpful insurance in case a kernel upgrade causes your normal boot process to fail.
3. Has anybody tried/succeeded/failed to dual-boot in this fashion before me, and if so what did they do?
Many people dual-boot Windows and Linux under EFI. There are a huge number of possible solutions. My own Windows/Linux dual-boot system uses:
rEFInd
rEFInd's EFI filesystem drivers
Linux kernels on Linux-native /boot partitions (two partitions, one for each of the two distributions installed on that computer)
The Windows boot loader on the ESP
This works well for me, but it wouldn't work with gummiboot instead of rEFInd, since gummiboot can't redirect the boot process to another partition. (gummiboot also can't automatically load filesystem drivers.) Arch Linux users who use gummiboot often mount the ESP at /boot, which enables gummiboot to easily launch the Linux kernel. Doing this with multiple Linux distributions would be awkward, though, since you'd end up with two distributions' kernels in the same directory.

Dual boot Windows 7 partition help

I want to dual boot Windows 7 & arch but I need help with figuring out what partitions to make and where to put them because it seems the automatic partition-er won't do the trick for me.
I have two drives that I want to completely format for a fresh, clean install: a 60GB SSD & a 750GB hard drive. I want the end result to be that the SSD only has Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1 installed to it and I will point the 'My Documents', 'My Pictures', etc. to a NTFS partition on the hard disk drive ( I know how to do this folder pointing ). I don't want arch to touch the SSD if possible so I can reformat the SSD separately if I ever just want to reformat Windows. I only want arch to be on the hard disk for that reason. I don't think I care which one handles the OS switching at boot ( should I favor Windows MBR or syslinux? Please give advice. ) And I would assume I make the NTFS partition on the hard disk a primary partition so how do I split up arch for the 3 other primary partitions left since the auto partition from the arch boot CD uses 4?

I'm no expert, but the way I would do it would be like this:
1. Create partitions on the HDD for /, /boot, /home and swap, along with one (or more) for your Windows personal files
2. Set the BIOS to boot from the SSD.
3. Install Windows on the SSD.
4. Right-click the "My Documents" folder, select "properties", then the "Location" tab and choose the new location for the folder.
5. Install Arch on the HDD partitions, and allow the boot manager to install itself in the MBR of the SSD.
Then the whole boot process will be on the SSD... If you ever need to get rid of the Linux bootloader, you can overwrite it with a "clean" Windows one using bootrec.exe (see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392).
Last edited by esuhl (2012-03-26 04:52:12)

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 Windows 7/8 - Two Separate Hard Drives App to Change Default OS

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