Need advise on a second Hard Drive

[athenroy]

Hello, I am currently running Win 7 and another distro which I installed using their Wubi install which of course gives me a dual boot menu.  I would really like to switch over to PCLos and also keep the MS system since I have a few programs which are not available on Linux.  I haven't partitioned a hard drive in a long time and having bought this machine used I don't have the MS restore disc, so don't want to loose that.  I was going to un-install the other distro and buy a second hard drive to use for probably 2 PCLos installs.  What, if any problems am I going to run into and I'm assuming I should install whatever multi-boot loader on the main hard drive.  Any comments would be welcome at this point.

[T6]

well, the restoration disc wipes the hard disk and deletes everything on practically all the brands so you need the real windows installation disc, depending on the version of xp you have the iso can be downloaded from microsoft website

pclinux after loaded has a install to hard disk button, can't describe it because i haven't installed since september last year

in the installation process you will be allowed to use the existing partitions or edit the partitions available

now, if you only have the windows partition and the recovery partition, this is a complicated situation and before you advance i would suggest you to do backups before doing anything to your hard disk

edit, create or delete partitions is a task that if fails to be done properly can leave you crying for the lost files

this is a rule that must apply for every os you install, windows, mac or linux, keep backup of your files all the time

about the wubi, is it a linux on a windows partition or do you have a real linux partition?

[Old-Polack]

Hello, I am currently running Win 7 and another distro which I installed using their Wubi install which of course gives me a dual boot menu.  I would really like to switch over to PCLos and also keep the MS system since I have a few programs which are not available on Linux.  I haven't partitioned a hard drive in a long time and having bought this machine used I don't have the MS restore disc, so don't want to loose that.  I was going to un-install the other distro and buy a second hard drive to use for probably 2 PCLos installs.  What, if any problems am I going to run into and I'm assuming I should install whatever multi-boot loader on the main hard drive.  Any comments would be welcome at this point.

How you partition a second drive depends in part on how large the drive is. If it's a very large drive, you could place a swap partition at the beginning, followed by a / partition for the first PCLinuxOS installation. After that you could add a / home or data partition, depending on whether you want a separate /home partition. Next you would need an extended partition to contain any additional logical partitions for the second, and any additional installations you may desire.

Multiple installations can share a single swap partition, so there's no need for another one when adding additional installations. For myself I don't use separate /home partitions, instead having data partitions I mount at various consistent mount points on each installation. My /home/polack directories are mainly used to hold each installations personal application settings, with important data I wish to keep being placed in the data partitions. My / partitions vary in size from 25-30 GB to one that is ~100 GB, and contains a number of VirtualBox VMs. Size of / partitions is a matter of choice, and depends on the intended use of the particular OS that will reside there.

With two drives, Always but the grub bootloader on the drive that does not have a Windows installation, and in BIOS, make that drive the boot drive. This protects grub from being overwritten by any Windows repairs or re-installations.

[ThirdOfSix]

athenroy,

You are wise in wanting to keep Windows on its own drive.

First, I would say do not uninstall your other distribution or modify your existing drive in any way shape or form.

Buy a new drive and play with gparted to create the partitions on it for the sizes that you are are going to want but if the drive is large enough, leave space at the end of it large enough to later create a partition to back up your Windows drive.

Then, disconnect your windows drive so that there is no chance at all of modifying it unintentionally.

Now, install one or more PCLOS flavors on your new drive and update them.

Now, once you know that the new drive will boot into all of your PCLOS flavors, shut down and reconnect your Windows drive.

If the machine boots into PCLOS, great. If it does not, go into the BIOS and set the machine to boot from the PCLOS drive.

Now boot back into PCLOS and edit your menu.lst file to add a stanza at the end of it that will chain load your Windows drive boot loader.

Reboot and see if selecting that new stanza takes you to the boot loader that you have been used to on your machine up to now.

If it does...and it should... you are are done.

This method allows you to add your new stuff without touching your original drive.

If in the future you have any problems with the distributions on the PCLOS drive, just unplug it and your machine will boot as it does now.

There is almost no risk of losing your windows install this way.

But, personally, I would still back it up first using Acronis or the program of your choice.

Now if you did not already backup your Windows drive, learn how to run one of the disk copying and back up programs available in the repositories and back up your Windows drive to the space you left on the end of your new drive.


Notice that I did not say to use redo MBR. The reason is that there is a good chance that you could inadvertently modify your original drive due to the fact that there are some really ambiguous choices presented to the user when using it. By manually editing the menu.lst file on your new drive only, you do not need to touch the Windows drive.

I would give you the exact text of the new stanza but my memory is such that I would probably get it wrong and you can find it in the forum in multiple places by searching for "Old-Polack" and "chain loading".


Also, the other reason that I say to do it this way by chain loading to your existing drive is that there is a good chance that the distribution coexisting on the Windows drive uses GRUB 2 which PCLOS does not and even though the two don't work well together they are now separate and it won't matter.

EDIT

Well, it looks like once again I typed too slow and OP got here first.

[T6]

"You are wise in wanting to keep Windows on its own drive."

my netbook has one hard disk and dualboot perfectly xp and pclinux

the only problem when i reinstall xp each 4 months is that i have to use redombr in the livecd and that takes few seconds

[ThirdOfSix]

T6,

I suspect that you think that I was putting down Windows but I really wasn't.

As you know many of the users of Linux tend to try out new distributions frequently even though most have at least one favorite.

When you consider that there are numerous installers that behave in subtly different ways, it is very easy to temporarily render a drive as unbootable while trying a new distribution.

By keeping the Windows drive separate, there is always the ability to use it as a known fall back install while sorting out the new experimental distro.

This machine has PCLOS and a six or seven year old install of Windows XP that I use daily that I have never reinstalled.

So, even though I tend to not trust Microsoft or Windows, I am not fanatically religious about it. I was also at one time a factory trained Apple repairman.

My attitude towards different computers and operating systems are almost always based on business practices rather than technology.

There is not now nor will there ever be a perfect computer or operating system. I have never used one that did not have things I disliked as well as things that I liked.

[T6]

no, sorry, i just said that it is easy to do the way i did without any problems but your argument is valid 

[athenroy]

Thanks, everyone, What I have now is the OEM 500 GiB Hitachi SATA drive that came with the computer, and, yes, I think I'll leave it "as is".  I used to have 4 OSes on one hard drive years back, but I also remember I had to re-install Win 98 because I messed up a partition, so better safe than sorry!  The original 500 GiB drive is discontinued by Hitachi, I guess, so I was going to order a full 1 TiB.  At the price, I won't go broke!  Funny, the price of the 1 TiB is the same as what I paid for the 2 GiB drive I had the 4 Oses on in the late 90s/early 2000s!  Being retired, I'll probably order the new drive around June 3 and as soon as it arrives and I get it installed, if I have any questions I'll be sure and ask.  I really appreciate the help.  I've heard a lot of good things about PCLos, especially related to stability and not rushing new releases.  Thanks again, everyone and glad to meet you all.