[dba-Tech] Multi-Boot, Multi-OS, Boot Magic, etc.

Arthur,
I dont know whether the following is of any help for you, but still..
I found SATA drives to be much easier to handle for such tasks. I realize 
you have got this brand new PATA, and I dont know wheter you want to spend 
any more money. (Extension cards for hooking up SATA are cheap).

I had once (some years ago) pretty bad experience with BootMagic. Dont 
remember the details, but i wont touch it since. could have been my mistake 
though.

I had one PC set up with two PATA as raid 1. - new maiboard with onboard 
Nvidia RAID. kept messing up my drives for months and months until I finally 
put two SATA in, where I can save the whole Sys partition to the other drive 
and run from there (see my mail here about problems with Word and Wordpad).

Sorry, if this was not much help.
Lembit

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arthur Fuller" <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" 
<dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 7:30 PM
Subject: [dba-Tech] Multi-Boot, Multi-OS, Boot Magic, etc.


> What I have:
>
> a P4 1.8Gz, 2GB RAM, and 2 HDs, one 18GB and one 80GB. I have a brand new
> 250 GB HD that I wish to substitute for the 18GB. The box has a pair of
> burners in it, too, a CD burner that can play DVDs and a dual-layer DVD
> burner. AFAIK, this prevents me from hooking up three HDs at once, unless 
> I
> temporarily disconnect one of these burners -- which is an option, if it
> helps me arrive at the desired destination.
>
> What I want:
>
> 1. an XP Pro boot with everything typical of a developer environment 
> (which
> exists currently).
> 2. a Linux boot using either Suse Enterprise 10 or Ubuntu.
> 3. (Don't laugh, even if my only reason is nostalgia) A DOS 6.22 boot, 
> with
> Clipper and Blinker and Artful.Lib and assorted other DOS-days utilities.
>
>
> Suse installed very well, last time I did it. Ubuntu, much as I like it,
> gave repeated problems, screwing up my MBR with grub. Suse uses the other
> multi-boot, which is why I'm considering that route, even though Ubuntu is
> much prettier. Suse also found the two printers that are attached to XP
> boxes; that impressed me too.
>
> Because of the grub issues, I'm thinking that the safest route is to
> completely separate the Linux and XP stuff -- separate physical disks, not
> just partitions. That said, I'm guessing that I would set them both up 
> with
> a primary partition. After that, the waters get very muddy for me. I have
> Partition Magic 8, which includes utilities to copy partitions from one
> drive to another, etc., and another utility called Boot Magic, which I 
> have
> never used.
>
> Perhaps needless to say, the box in question is an ancillary box, 
> definitely
> not my main squeeze, so aside from wasting hours recovering from mistakes,
> it won't impair my need to make a living.
>
> How to get from here to there....
>
> Several scenarios come to mind, but I'm a lot better with software than
> hardware, so I conjecture with much trepidation.
>
> 1. Unhook one of the burners, plug in the 250GB, run the Partition Magic
> utility that copies everything from one partition to another and changes 
> all
> the references that formerly pointed to x, to y, or whatever the new drive
> is called. Run around a church three times counter-clockwise, and reboot.
>
> 2. Copy the contents of the 18GB drive to the 80GB drive, then replace the
> 18 with the 250 and start over. Once everything is copied from the 80 to 
> the
> 250, run Partition Magic and format the disk and make it a Linux disk (and
> perhaps also a DOS 6.22 disk -- LOL, that was back when you could only 
> have
> a 2GB partition, but it's kind of nostalgic fun to go back there once in a
> while). I even have a CP/M emulator installed, although I haven't yet
> succeeded in getting my copy of dBASE II over there :)
>
> Since I have never run Boot Magic, I have no idea what it wants from me, 
> but
> before I try anything, I'd appreciate hearing from someone with experience
> using it. It strikes me also that rather than risk the MBR, I could 
> instead
> set up both physical disks as primary/bootable, then when I want to switch
> OSes, go into setup at the bootup and tell setup to use the other physical
> disk. No doubt that would work and perhaps also be the safest place, but a
> nice multi-boot menu would be nicer. One of the problems I have with
> multi-boot is the vastly different descriptions of a given physical disk
> that Windows and Linux use.
>
> 3. Another scenario, suggested by a colleague who is much more adept than 
> I
> on this level, is to create a series of minimally-sized partitions on one 
> of
> the disks, such that all the desired OSes reside on those partitions. 
> Since
> grub has bitten my hand several times, I am extremely reluctant to go down
> this path.
>
> Any advice, alternative scenarios, etc. most gratefully appreciated.
>
> TIA
> Arthur
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