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.

Similar Messages

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
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>
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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>
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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.

Two Identical HDDs + RAID0 + (LVM?) + GPT & GRUB2 + Dual Booting

Hello,
I have been reading about RAID, LVM and GPT. RAID0 is interesting to me since I have two identical HDDs in my laptop and I am looking for better performance and less free-space fragmentation.
My current disk layout looks like the following:
sda:
Primary:
sda1 ntfs system-reserved
sda2 ntfs windows*
Logical:
sda5 ext4 root
sda6 swap
sda7 ext4 personal
sda8 ntfs windows2*
sdb:
sdb1 ext4 multimedia
*windows is the C drive and windows2 is the D drive, just needed extra space so I cut off a part of sda7.
What I want to achieve (and based on my understanding of RAID0) is the following:
GPT:
sdm1 windows
sdm2 boot
sdm3 root
sdm4 home (personal + multimedia from above)
I will use both sda and sdb for this.
Questions:
0. Is that even possible (considering windows)? My expectation is no, unless windows uses the same RAID0 implementation as Linux (partition table/layout data and whatnot). In that case, would it be possible to have something similar to the following:
GPT:
sda:
sda1 windows-c-drive
sdm1 boot
sdm2 root
sdm3 home (personal + multimedia from above)
sdb:
sdb1 windows-d-drive
sdm1 boot
sdm2 root
sdm3 home
* sdm1,2,3 are the RAID partitions laid out over sda and sdb.
1. I am not sure what LVM can offer me other than flexible movement/resizing of partitions, which I don't need.
2. Does RAID0 imply read/write parallelism? Which would provide better read/write performance?
3. Has anyone had experience booting Windows 7 on GPT + RAID0 shared with Linux? (As shown above)
4. Any suggestions as to how to reach my goal?
5. I will need to backup everything and reinstall windows and Arch with RAID, correct? Which I am ready to do anyways.

There is an option in the "BIOS" settings called "Enable UEFI boot". I tried enabling it, nothing changed at all (in other words, no problems arise).
Last edited by fredmorcos (2011-09-17 18:22:23)

Dual Boot on 2 SSD`s

I currently have Windows 8.1 installed on my boot SSD and I have a spare SSD doing nothing. If I install Windows 10 on the spare SSD, will it become the boot SSD? And can I just unplug the Windows 10 SSD and boot from Windows
8.1 SSD or will a dual boot option be given when I boot my PC?

may just say that if you install any windows configuration under bios (legacy mode) you will get very few problems .its only when we start to use UEFI bios it goes pear shaped. when using uefi mode it changes the bios boot options to the latest installation
and that's were the problem arises it wont see the windows 8 installation as the valid boot option, I have gone into bios and re-selected my first ssd as the master boot snd windows 8.1 boots up ok but a reboot ignores my last selection and gives me no boot
mgr. my only option was to disconnect ssd2 (now formatted ) and reinstall windows 8.1 po from scratch . so that the uefi bios gets it instruction that ssd 1 is the main boot dirve .all goes as expected relly well. I am present trying to get all info about
installing in uefi mode and all about uefi from intel. it might be I am not following correct procedures ,but I will find out. so now I hve NO windows 10 and running on all cylinders on window 8.1 pro

Adobe: Does 2-computer rule allow 2 installs on 1 desktop (dual boot) + laptop installation

Adobe:
I currently have Vista Home Premium 32-bit installed on one internal HDD, and soon will be installing Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on my second internal HDD--creating a dual boot environment for a while, until I eventually do away with Vista.
If I install Creative Cloud in both operating systems--does this satisfy the 2-computer rule? Or is it still considered 1 computer, so I can install Creative Cloud on my laptop.
Thanks.

It will be the 2-computer rule ,

[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.

How can I dual boot Windows 7 on a MBR disk and Windows 8 on GPT Disk with UEFI BIOS

I have recently build a computer. I bought a Seagate 3TB HDD which I planned to install Windows 8.1 Pro on and I also bought another Seagate 1TB HDD which I planned to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I wanted to dual boot the two systems.
However, I want to format the 3TB HDD into GPT and format the 1TB HDD into MBR mode.
Can this be done in a UEFI BIOS environment?
Windows 7 Ultimate X64 ---------- MBR 1TB HDD
Windows 8.1 Pro X64--------------- GPT 3TB HDD
Please reply soon, because I am in a hurry to solve this problem.
My family members need a working PC at home :)
My Motherboard : AsRock Fatal1ty H97 Killer
Please help !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does these help?
http://www.pagestart.com/win7win81db01171401.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425418,00.asp
Arnav Sharma | http://arnavsharma.net/ Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading
the thread.

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.)

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.

Edge e520 i5 UEFI/GPT Dual boot Windows/Ubuntu

Hi!
I have an Edge e520 1143GVG. It has an UEFI-Board with Win7/64 on MBR-Harddisk.
What I want:
GPT-Partition scheme and dual boot Windows 7/64 and ubuntu 14.04/64.
I managed to backup the partitions on an external HDD, install GPT on Harddisk, recopy saved Partitions and have now a fully running Win7/64 on GPT-System (it wasn't that easy as it seems here).
Next Step is to install Ubuntu on a separate Partition. I took a standard Ubuntu boot-CD, startet the pc with that boot disk (Board-Settings: UEFI/BIOS "Both", UEFI First) and installed Ubuntu without any trouble. Unfortunately no boot entry has been generated, so I tried to add one with EasyBCD. That doesn't work, an error is shown like "Windows cannot be startet, no valid file /NST/grub.mbr" or something like that.
I think the reason is that the cd booted in BIOS Mode, not UEFI. If I set board setting to "UEFI only", the boot CD will not start. So I built a bootable Ubuntu USB-Flashdrive with GPT-Scheme, but it didn't start as well.
After that I updated BIOS hoping UEFI-Boot from external devices will be possible then. It isn't.
The e520-board seems to be outdated or faulty, it is not possible to boot from USB or CD in UEFI-Mode.
Does anyone knows a solution? Will Lenovo update the BIOS?
kr,
Bernd Hollermann, Germany

I have to update my problem:
booting in gpt/uefi-mode is impossible from usb-key, but is ok from DVD. I managed to install Ubuntu now, everything runs well, after I took a 64-bit version on a dvd.

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

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

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.

Dual boot ArchLinux and Win XP on 2 separate HDD

Dear Archers
My friend wants me to install ArchLinux on his desktop, with 2 separate HDD. He already has win xp installed on one HDD. He wants to dual boot. Pl. give some inputs as to how this should be done.
(My experience is limited. I have installed ArchX86_64 only, on my desktop)
I have read the wiki, but I am not confident of doing this with only so little explanation

It should be pretty simple. Just install Arch on the HDD without XP on it, install grub to the Arch drive's MBR, then change the boot priority in the BIOS so that the Arch drive is booted first.
When you add your "windows" menu item to GRUB, the "root" entry should look like:
rootnoverify(hd1,0)
assuming XP is on the first paritition of the other drive.
Assuming you install GRUB to the correct drive, it should be harmless to play around with menu.lst until you get it working right.
Last edited by alexandrite (2010-08-24 14:24:39)

SSD + HDD, GPT & MBR dual boot.

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