Currently dual boot - How to add third?

[grimdeath]

I currently run Windows Vista and Ubuntu 8.10 on two hard drives in my desktop. Here's how everything is setup:

-First Drive 300gb Seagate - Windows Vista (full drive)
-Second Drive 120gb Western Digital - Ubuntu 8.10 (full drive)

Grub is the primary bootloader. I also use EasyBCD to remove the timer for the Windows Bootloader if I choose Vista so it never shows. What I want to do is adjust my second drive to be about ~60gb Ubuntu and ~60gb Windows 7. I eventually plan to delete Win 7 and use that area as a test area for other OS's though. Here's the setup I want:

-First Drive 300gb Seagate - Windows Vista (full drive)
-Second Drive - Partition One - Ubuntu 8.10
-Second Drive - Parition Two - Windows 7 / OS Test Area
(I am willing to use any bootloader that shows all OS's though Vista needs to be default)

I will probably just use gparted within Ubuntu (live cd) for the partitioning. I am just curious if this will screw up my Grub setup at all. Ive heard that installing Windows last can be a bit troublesome to multiboot setups so I am curious if I will just be able to install Windows 7 beta and it will show up in grub or not. Regardless Vista has to show up for me, its my primary OS on the system.

I also plan to format the partition later and try out other Linux distros and possibly install Mac OSX for a hackintosh setup down the road for personal learning. Will this cause any headaches or is there an easier way to set things up so "swapping" the testing partition OS is as painless as possible?

Any help would be much appreciated.

*edit* reading around on my own I see that you should always install newer versions of Windows last, so since I already have vista on then installing 7 next should be fine. What I am curious about is what this will do with Grub, will i still be able to boot into Ubuntu and will there be any other hiccups since Ubuntu was installed in between the two.

 

[grimdeath]

Nevermind, I was hoping for a more immediate answer but nothing at all?!?!....thats no good. I was able to resolve the issue myself while dealing with a troll on the Arstechnica forums.

For anyone interested, I will be kind enough to share how I did it:

-I went ahead and partitioned the 2nd drive using gparted in my Ubuntu live cd
-Installed Windows 7 to the new partition
-This deleted my grub bootloader so I was back to a Vista or Win 7 boot depending on the order of my HDD's
-This is where I am not but I hope to sit down and reinstall Grub tomorrow, then add any missing windows loaders not already present on Grub...this should do the trick.

Good luck and thanks for...er...not helping me 😛

 

[VinDSL]

Sorry, I had to go to work today... 😀

When I first put the 320GB TravelStar HD in this lappy, I installed like 5 kernels on this thing, using standard Live CDs - no trick to it.

Every time I installed another version of Linux, it simply added more partitions to the disk, and added more choices to GRUB.

As long as you don't tell the installer to use all available space on the HD, I don't know what difference it would make...

EDIT

I reread the thread. I don't know exactly what help you were asking for...

Maybe that's why nobody answered you.

If you're asking how to repartition/resize a drive - then, yes, GParted is the way to go, but if it's a NTFS drive, you better be running NTFS-3G too, because GParted doesn't handle NTFS too well...

Anyway, I guess you figured that out the hard way - should have waited for me to get home, maybe... :beer:

 

[yinan]

This is one of the great advantages of virtualization. You would not have to jump through all these hoops. Just have a standard host OS that you like, install the others in a VM, and if you dont like them just delete them and no harm is done to the host OS.

 

[grimdeath]

I was mainly asking the best way to install Windows 7 without messing up my bootloader (grub) but if it was in escapable due to Windows "hating" other OS's besides Windows. Then if it did screw up what was the best way to fix it so I could get another bootloader setup to easily access my 3 OS's. In addition to that I wondered if this third partition would be "swappable" for other OS's without destorying my bootloader each time....hopefully that is more clear.

I have been lazy and still havent gone in and reinstalled Grub yet (too much warhammer!) but I hope to this week or this weekend.

yinan, yes I had had virtualization in mind but unfortunately it would not do the main thing I hoped to do with 7, test the new interface...from what ive heard the internface will not operate properly virtualized! I have virtualized win xp on my ubuntu drive though, it is handy and would probably do better for trying a variety of linux OS's where performance is more negotionable. again I didnt make myself clear which is my mistake, I really wanted to see windows 7 running native so I could test performance compared to vista...not for a tech blog or anything like that..just personal curiosity! I was a bit put out with the drop in performance in gaming between xp and vista so I had hoped to see what had improved or not for 7! now that im running it it does feel snappier but without my bootloader its been a pain to jump back and forth lol...plus warhammer 😛