[SOLVED] dual boot partitions

acidic · 2012-04-19 11:07:11

I have four partitions for my arch install. Does this mean that I won't be able to dual boot another distribution without having to reinstall arch? There can only be 4 partitions right? Or is there some way around it?

Thanks

Last edited by acidic (2012-04-20 11:06:23)

rnarch · 2012-04-19 11:23:23

There can be only 4 primary partitions on a disk. However, one of the partitions can be made 'extended'. In that you can have any number of logical partitions. So there is no problem for multibooting. I believe Windows and BSD need a primary partition for installation. Obviously one of the primary partitions has to go. You can install full Arch system on one partition. I am not sure if this can be done without need for reinstalling arch. Following link of full system backup may be of help:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fu … with_rsync

Also see:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … Partitions

Output of 'sudo fdisk -l' will show you if all your partitions are primary or there is an extended one also. You may post the output here.

If there is a swap partition, that can be deleted, converted to extended, logical partitions made in extended, one of them made swap, and other distributions can be added. This should not cause any loss of data but this will require partitions to be resized.

Last edited by rnarch (2012-04-19 11:40:59)

acidic · 2012-04-19 12:26:16

I was just going to ask if that was a good idea. I will give it a go

rnarch · 2012-04-19 13:11:28

Let us know what happened.

seveg · 2012-04-19 14:23:33

Windows for sure needs primary partition.
And you will have to remove two of your partitions, one for windows and one for extened partition, which holds information about logical paritions.

Last edited by seveg (2012-04-19 14:23:46)

andesho91 · 2012-04-19 22:19:18

Also, once you created your extended partition, you can put as many logical partitions within it as you require.

magicalChicken · 2012-04-19 23:06:00

For the purposes of moving the data without having to reinstall, I would recommend getting hold of an external drive big enough and using dd to copy the partitions over. Then you can reformat the drive without having to worry about data. Then just dd the images from the external drive back into the logical partitions. This will have problems if you use UUID for anything but that can be corrected without too many problems.

acidic · 2012-04-20 11:03:37

I removed the swap partition and replaced it with an extended. Now I have Ubuntu installed for something more stable for uni work. Don't think it will last long though because I really don't like unity and its already crashed twice.

Is having my swap partition as a logical partition going to affect performance?

Thanks guys

rnarch · 2012-04-20 15:57:02

Is having my swap partition as a logical partition going to affect performance?

I do not think so. Certainly it is not worth having swap on a primary partition.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os. … 28ed10bb2b

andesho91 · 2012-04-20 21:41:09

acidic wrote:

I removed the swap partition and replaced it with an extended. Now I have Ubuntu installed for something more stable for uni work. Don't think it will last long though because I really don't like unity and its already crashed twice.

Is having my swap partition as a logical partition going to affect performance?

If you can hang on until Precise is released, then you can have the old GNOME2 style inteface. See http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/gnom … r-changed/

As for swap, I find that if you have more that 756MB of RAM, you should be fine it you are just `using' linux. If you are going to go crazy with memory heavy applications, then swap would be useful (unless you have 4GB of RAM like me)

rnarch · 2012-04-21 01:46:51

if you have more that 756MB of RAM, you should be fine it you are just `using' linux

I think most linux liveCDs also work without swap (they may use swap partition if one is available).

Last edited by rnarch (2012-04-21 01:47:06)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-04-19 11:07:11

[SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#2 2012-04-19 11:23:23

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#3 2012-04-19 12:26:16

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#4 2012-04-19 13:11:28

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#5 2012-04-19 14:23:33

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#6 2012-04-19 22:19:18

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#7 2012-04-19 23:06:00

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#8 2012-04-20 11:03:37

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#9 2012-04-20 15:57:02

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#10 2012-04-20 21:41:09

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

#11 2012-04-21 01:46:51

Re: [SOLVED] dual boot partitions

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