[ubuntu-za] [SOLVED] Need some URGENT help please.

[daniel at dline.co.za]

I have some experience on multi-boot and multi drive with Linux and I just
want to quickly share with you how I go about the whole process.

At this stage I have a triple boot setup on my machine, 10.04, Win7 x64
and Win7 x32. I have the windows on there because I need to use several
software packages that is not available for Linux. This includes the Adobe
package and TurboCAD. All three OS's sit on one 500GB SATA drive, and then
I have two older IDE disks with all my data and media etc on it. I have
four primary partitions on the SATA disk, each OS on one and then the
fourth is used for additional data storage.

The magic is, each OS is completely unaware of it's fellow OS's on the
disk. The partitions are invisible to each other. So there is no danger of
one OS making amok with another OS's partition and messing things up.

I use a program called BootIT NG. Its an amazing bootmanager that gives
you full control over the MBR and partitions. It installs a pointer in the
MBR that points to a small (<10 MB) partition where BootIT sits. This means
the MBR suddenly expands to a few MB, which means you can have more than
four primary partitions on one disk. This is called and EMBR, or Extended
MBR - magical.

BootIT also gives you the choice to make partitions visible, or invisible
to eachother. Each partition gets a "virtual", custom made MBR (ie. four
prim. partitions max). So now, before installation, you make everything
else invisible to the partition you want to install on, and then the OS is
unaware of anything else during installation. The ohter partitions show up
as unallocated space to the installer's partition manager. Just choose the
"advanced" option in the disk manager, and select the only available
partition (the one you made in BootIT) and tell it to leave the "empty"
space alone.

This makes creating and maintaining a multiboot setup a breeze, as it lets
you "unplug" partitions or whole drives before you install anything. It has
a full featured partition manager, you can clone (backup) partitions and
restore them and so much more. And the best is, it runs in a GUI, with a
mouse pointer, and it starts up instantly after the PC posts.

Go to http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm to check things out. It's
quite costly ($35) but IMO it's totally worth the money.

If this makes the life of anyone out there better, then I will be happy.
Feel free to ask me any questions regarding this.

Regards
Daniel