What do I do with this?

Kas_ · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Oct 2012 Posts: 124

I have:
2 20gb IDE hard drives
1 1.5 tb IDE (i think) hard drive.

Problem:
I don't use Windows but I'm afraid to completely leave Windows. It's using my 1.5 TB drive. I need that space for other stuff. (videos, Gnome, KDE, pictures, documents)

To Do:
I want to put Windows 7 on one of the 20gb and Gentoo on the other one. I want them both to be able to access the files saved on the 1.5 TB.

Right Now:
The 1.5 TB is truecrypted and running Windows 7.
One of the 20gb drives are running Gentoo. both drives are identical and I'm a little worried that I won't be able to tell them apart and might end up saving windows over my gentoo one.

I have a:
AMD Athlon II x4 640
3 gb RAM

How do I do this? Do I need to unencrypt the 1.5 TB first? Also, would there be a problem with filesystems? How do I save my current stuff on the 1.5 TB? How do I format the 1.5 TB after I install windows on the 20gb?

If this is a bad idea, please tell me. Thanks.

jpc22 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2012 Posts: 195

Are you sure windows 7 with all the updates will fit on a 20gb drive.

You should backup your data first. Linux can read pretty much any filesystem unlike windows, so your filesystem choice will be limited to windows compliant ones like fat32 and ntfs.

You could add a label to your gentoo partition to identify it. and work with disk uuid instead of dev/sdx.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:12 pm Post subject:

Kas_,

Windows 7 will struggle on a 20G drive. Leave it where it is but shrink its partition. You can then use the unallocated free space as you wish.
You can move parts of your Gentoo there if you wish, e.g. /home, /usr/portage, /tmp, /var/tmp/portage which will free up space on your 20G Gentoo drive. KDE and Gnome might even fit.

You can move your whole Gentoo install over if you want but thats more work than just moving a few parts.

For Windows and Gentoo to write to a common filesystem, you need to choose either FAT32 (vfat to Gentoo) or NTFS. If you choose NTFS, you need FUSE support in your kernel and the ntfs-3g package.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Kas_ · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Oct 2012 Posts: 124

Yeah, actually, I was thinking it over and I should probably just move Gentoo to the 1.5 tb. Do I need to defrag and whatever? I think windows uses 2 partitions and gentoo uses 3 and the IDE drives only split into 4. So, partitioning could get kinda messy. I could use gparted but i think that will mess up windows. I do have the windows installation discs so it's not a problem if i mess up windows. I'll save my files first though.

As for gentoo, what do i copy to save my current kernel configuration? I think i'll probably have to alter it because the hard drive is different. Do I need to completely re-install everything or can i just kinda copy paste...probably re-install right?

I think I'll save 1 of the 20gb and set that to vfat for saving files in between.

If:
Rosetta Stone, Dreamweaver, Itunes (Songs included), Photoshop, Microsoft Office is probably what I'll have on Windows

If:
Movies, Libre Office (powerpoint, documents,spreadsheets), Desktop Environments, Website backups, Apache2 is probably what I'll have on Gentoo

Then:
About how much space should I give to each of them?
Thanks for your help.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:37 pm Post subject:

Kas_,

The kernel used to limit you to 15 partitions on a SCSI device and 63 on an IDE device. Now that the /dev/hdX drivers are depreciated and everything is SCSI, the limit may be 15 partitions but I have seen mored used.

You are limited to four primary partitions with an MSDOS disk lable and 255 with a GPT Disk Lable.
You may designate one of the primary partitions as an extended partition, where it just serves to reserve space. Further (logical) partitions are then created inside the extended partition.

Your kernel configuration is fine, provided your Gentoo can see the hard drive now. You have drivers for the controller on the motherboard, not the hard drive.
You need your /usr/src/linux/.config file to preserver yor kernel configuration.

To migrate Gentoo, boot with system rescue CD, or any liveCD. make a dir called /mnt/old
Mount your existing Gentoo partitions there, taking care to use the -o ro option. This stops you messing up later.

Male a dir called /mnt/new and mount your new Gentoo space here, just like you were going to install Gentoo.
Now you can do

Chiitoo · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 2:02 am Post subject: ><)))°€

Teegrins!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:13 am Post subject:

Chiitoo,

What you say is both correct and relevant. Your process destroys grub though.

The problem arises from the fact that the MBR can contain at most one bootloader. Either the Windows one or one of the Linux ones.
Therefore, whichever bootloader is selected, it has to be able to boot all of your operating systems.

The configurations are well documented.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Bones McCracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1611 Location: U.S.A.

One approach, since you're planning on using multiple disks, is to preserve the Windows MBR by installing GRUB on a different disk. This requires you to set that other disk to be your boot disk (in BIOS).

You still create a GRUB entry to chainload the Windows bootloader. The MBR isntalled by Windows is simply ignored (as it's no longer your boot disk). This way, if you ever want to de-install Linux, you simply change the boot disk back to the one you installed Windows on, and the MBR is still intact, allowing you to boot Windows without GRUB and without going through any repair process.
_________________

jpc22 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2012 Posts: 195

You could also install grub on the mbr of a usb stick.

Bones McCracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1611 Location: U.S.A.

Chiitoo · Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:25 am Post subject:

Bones McCracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1611 Location: U.S.A.

Could be; I haven't personally set up a multiboot like this with GRUB2. Or maybe you screwed up and did it wrong.

In any case, good to know the tools to save yourself if you need to.
_________________

Chiitoo · Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 4:34 am Post subject:

cwr · Veteran Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 1969

The simplest approach is probably to put Gentoo on the second drive, with a partition readable by
Windows, and boot Gentoo (grub) via the Windows menu - it means another 5 seconds or so
of delay, but it means you don't have to mess with the main drive's MBR.

Adding stuff to the Windows boot menu is easy on XP and below, and not difficult otherwise.
Google is your friend here.

Will

Bones McCracker · Veteran Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 1611 Location: U.S.A.

That's an alternative, but I personally wouldn't say it's the simplest or choose to do it, in a multi-drive scenario. However, that's what's great about Linux and Gentoo; you can do things the way that best suits your personal needs.
_________________

Herring42 · Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:30 am Post subject:

If you are resizing partitions, be very careful resizing a truecrypt partition. In fact, I wouldn't do it at all, There is a very high risk of losing all your data.

Backup your files, create the new partitions, and then restore!
_________________
"The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is difficult
to determine whether or not they are genuine." -- Abraham Lincoln

Kas_ · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Oct 2012 Posts: 124

Hey;
Thanks for all your answers.

So I'll probably permanently decrypt the truecrypted drive. I really don't know what I'm going to do about the partitions but I'll probably just re-install windows or whatever, it's not really a big problem.

P1: /dev/sda1 100mb windows boot
P2: /dev/sda2 Windows root
P3: /dev/sda3 gentoo boot:(32 mb?)
P4 - Extended: /dev/sda4 <---- this get's split right...as in this does not count because it's split into /sda4 and /sda6 right?
--/dev/sda5 swap
-- /dev/sda6 gentoo root

***Question: If currently the drive is called" /dev/sdc because I have 3 drives and it is the third, then if I got rid of the other 2, would the drive then be known as /dev/sda? Cause this might be a problem. ****

**On Dual-booting***would it be easier if I have windows installed first then partition the drive? It seems that way.

Herring42 · Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:21 am Post subject: