Arch Linux

vfbsilva

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2010-04-08

Posts: 103

Doubt Concerning Grub

Folks I formatted my old hard drives as I got a new pc so I've installed win7 for the momment. I have 2 HDs one 500 GB one 350 GB.
I have mirrorring in one partition of 100GB for personal documents and pictures. So I have respectively 400GB and 250 GB to spare.
I did in the smaller HD a 150 GB to win 7 and a 100 GB to installing stuff. on the 400 GB left of the other HD I did a 100 GB partition for arch. And the rest are data partitions.

So to organize:

[HD1=350 GB]
150 Win7
100 Mirror
100 Installing Programs

[HD2= 500GB]
100 Arch
50 FreeBSDWannaBe
350 Data and Programs

My question is. Now SATA1 is HD1, as I dont like to mess windows partition with grub as windows 7 is grumpy on service packs when having different boot managers. So my plan so change the sata order on the bios so HD2 will be SATA1. Do I need totake some extra care on grub regarding this or arch install shall figure it out automagically?

Btw folks thanks for the distro and community.

Regards,
vfbsilva

mreschke

Member

Registered: 2009-09-17

Posts: 19

Re: Doubt Concerning Grub

So you haven't installed arch on hd2 yet?  If not, lets assume hd2 is sdb so your installing arch to sdb1, you want grub on sdb.  Now it will always be on that drives mbr, even if you arrange BIOS. Just be sure sdb is actually hd2 , may want to disable hd1 before install if your unsure. And fyi, I have 3 hds in one of mine, with only one grub on first HD, so grub boots all ~45 of my os, including all versions of windows, never a prob with grub and win, simply do the chain load.

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/mReschke

JackH79

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-18

Posts: 663

Website

Re: Doubt Concerning Grub

The wiki entry explains everything you need to know. Be sure to read the whole article to get comfortable with grubs capabilities.
With that many partitions you might want to consider using uuid instead of the standard /dev/sdX.

On a side note (just because I just switched over myself and am astonished (as much as you can be astonished by a bootloader )): check out syslinux as an alternative to grub as well. It's got the advantage that it's modular and can be as simple or as complicated (submenus, fonts, backgrounds, etc) as you want it to be.

Last edited by JackH79 (2011-05-07 06:13:48)