Installation from scratch

Hi
Just bought Disk Director Suite 10 and a new PC with no OS preinstalled.

My intention for the Operating Systems on my new pc is:

• Vista ultimate (as working OS)
• Vista ultimate (as testing OS)
• Windows XP
• Ubuntu 8.10

I did not find any installation guide for installing this (or a similar) configuration on a pc from scratch.

What's the easyest way ?

I have three HDs, each with 1 TB.

Greez

Yves

 

Welcome to the forum.

Do you plan on having the Windows operating systems all on the main booting drive (each booting from their own partition)? This is what I would do. There are different procedures depending on if your Windows systems are all on one drive or on different drives, especially when using OSS.

Ubuntu (Linux) can be installed pretty much anywhere, any drive, etc. and work okay. With 8.10, you may need to manually install GRUB after you install Ubuntu. So far, every install I've done with 8.10 didn't install GRUB properly and Ubuntu wouldn't boot.

 

WOW, that's a fast answer.... thanks.
I intend to put the different OS in different partitions on my main booting drive (Size ?).
On my (new) job I have to work with Linux and I'd like to practise this OS.
And I'd like to have it installed on my pc permanently. Unfortunately I am not the Linux crack until now.

Yves

 

I would install the OS you're going to use the most in the first partition (the fastest one) and keep the Windows installations in Primary partitions. Your drive may look something like this:

[Vista - Work (Primary NTFS)][Vista - Testing (Primary NTFS)][XP (Primary NTFS)]

followed by Logical partitions for Ubuntu:

[Ubuntu "root" (Logical ext3)][Ubuntu "swap" (Logical)][Ubuntu "home" (Logical ext3) -- if want it separate from "root"]

The sizes needed would depend on how much space you need for installed applications.

You would probably want to use part or all of one of the other drives for a Data partition, possibly a Windows/Linux shared partition and maybe a small OSS partition. (On my computer I use my Linux/Windows shared FAT32 partition for OSS.) The other drive could be used to save backup images (recommended).

I would install the Windows installations first, using the following procedure:

1. Boot to DD and setup your partitions on the booting drive.
2. For the Windows you are installing, set that partition Active.
3. Set all other Windows partitions Hidden.
4. Apply the changes.
5. Boot to the Windows CD/DVD and install Windows. Make sure to select the correct partition (Vista will show the hidden partitions).
6. I usually recommend having Windows do a Quick Format of the destination partition as this avoids some problems.
7. Once the installation has finished, the newly installed Windows should boot automatically when the computer boots.

After you have all the Windows operating systems installed, you can switch between them by booting to DD and setting the OS partition Active and hiding the other OS partitions. For example: To boot Vista - Temp, set the Vista - Temp partition Active and hide the Vista - Work and XP partitions.

Once the computer is in this state, you can install any boot manager you want to use. I would recommend you make an backup image of the drive at this point so you can easily return to this state if something goes wrong with installing the boot manager.

Installing Ubuntu is pretty simple. Keep in mind that if you create the partitions ahead of time, you'll need to "link" them during the install. More help can be provided on this later if you need it.

 

Thanks for the answer.

If I understood you right, I'll.......

1. first create 4 partitions with 100 GB on my master booting device (HD1) with booting from CD and Acronis Disk director.
2. Then I Install my different Windows OS and Linux in the different partitions by setting the partitions hidden/not hidden. As I need Vista twice I copy this partition.
3. At last I set my working OS active (named Vista-Work), install Disk Director with the BootManager. Then I can use all my OS.

As result my HD has 4 partitions with 4 OS. The rest of the HD can be used as data storage or spare place for other partitions. I have two other HDs installed.

PS: I cant test this now on my new pc. I am waiting to receive the CPU by post. And I dont want to destroy my lap to test this things.


Yves

 

Ubuntu (Linux) will require at least two partitions (root and swap). These will need to be Logical partitions since you can only have a maximum of either four Primary partitions or three Primary partitions and multiple Logical partitions.

Make sure to Label (name) your partitions so you can tell them apart. Also, you may want to use slightly different sizes instead of all 100GB so you can tell them apart by their sizes too.

An example layout may be like this:
[Vista - Work, NTFS 110GB, Primary]
[Vista - Testing, NTFS 105GB, Primary]
[XP, NTFS 100GB, Primary]
[Ubuntu, Swap, 2GB, Logical]
[Ubuntu - root, Ext3 50GB, Logical]
[Ubuntu - home, Ext3 95GB, Logical] --- NOTE: Not needed if everything is setup in root.
[Data/Storage, NTFS (or FAT32), All remaining space, Logical]

If you just create the Windows Primary partitions and leave the remainder of the drive unallocated, you can have Ubuntu use the unallocated space to setup and install Ubuntu using defaults.

After you have your Windows operating systems installed and booting correctly without a boot manager (by using DD to manually set the OS partition Active and hiding the other OS partitions), you can go about installing the boot manager. If you decide you're going to use OSS, then I'd recommend installing OSS from the DD CD and making sure that none of the OS partitions are hidden at that time. Once OSS is installed, you can set the correct options for each OS in the OSS boot menu.

There is also the option of installing OSS after you do your first Windows installation. If you do that, you would deactivate OSS, setup the partition(s) with DD for the next OS and then reactivate OSS after the installation is complete.