You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
Got a new computer which I put my old disks in. After a while I got them to
boot properly but I'm going to take the time to go from my current MBR setup to
GPT.
The idea
I have three disks, 480GB SSD, 640GB HDD and 2TB HDD. The idea is to use the
SSD for root and /home and then let the data on the 2TB be as it is (for now).
I will go all LVM on the SSD and 640 HDD (except for a part which will be for
windows 8). When I invest in a new disk (2TB) I will make the current 2TB LVM
as well as that new one so that moving "partitions" (LVM volumes) easier
if/when needed.
Questions
Will I still be needing something like syslinux/grub with UEFI? For the windows
part, will that require some sort of EFI partition and should I create that or
just leave 200GB + 500MB space at the beginning of the 640GB disk (and LVM on
200.5GB-END)?
If a bootloader is needed, can I put that on my SSD and still boot windows from
the HDD in an easy fashion?
Will there be any problems with having one disk still as MBR (I don't have the
space needed for backing up those 2TB currently)?
Offline
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPT
I'm not sure but it isn't clear whether you realise that GPT doesn't require EFI. (Maybe for Windows it does but certainly not Linux.)
At any rate, please use the wiki - there is a wealth of information on these pages, including everything you are asking.
Last edited by cfr (2013-08-11 03:00:30)
CLI Paste | How To Ask Questions
Arch Linux | x86_64 | GPT | EFI boot | refind | stub loader | systemd | LVM2 on LUKS
Lenovo x270 | Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz | Intel Wireless 8265/8275 | US keyboard w/ Euro | 512G NVMe INTEL SSDPEKKF512G7L
Offline
Will I still be needing something like syslinux/grub with UEFI?
Booting an OS always requires a boot loader. The details of what boot loaders are available varies from one platform and OS to another, but a boot loader is a necessity. My Web page, Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux, describes the options for booting Linux on an EFI-based computer. SYSLINUX and GRUB are both options, but there are others, too. My personal preference is to use the EFI stub loader with rEFInd, but as I'm rEFInd's maintainer, I'm not exactly unbiased.
For the windows part, will that require some sort of EFI partition and should I create that or just leave 200GB + 500MB space at the beginning of the 640GB disk (and LVM on 200.5GB-END)?
EFI systems require an EFI System Partition (ESP) to boot any OS. (An exception is EFI-based Macs, but they're just weird all around.) I recommend a size of 550MiB for the ESP. Many Arch Linux users like to mount the ESP at /boot, since that simplifies kernel management with certain boot configurations.
If a bootloader is needed, can I put that on my SSD and still boot windows from the HDD in an easy fashion?
Yes, at least in some sense. Boot loaders normally reside on the ESP, which is normally shared between OSes, although there are exceptions to both of these rules. The Windows C: partition is separate from the ESP. In theory, the two can reside on different disks, although in practice I'm not sure how the Windows installers and other tools would cope with that type of configuration. In theory, you can also have multiple ESPs (on the same or on different disks), although the Windows installer flakes out when there are multiple ESPs on a single disk. I'm not sure how the Windows installer copes with a system with multiple ESPs, each on its own disk.
Note that putting the boot loader on the SSD is something of a waste, since the boot loader is normally accessed only during the boot process, so there's relatively little speed gain from putting it on an SSD vs. on a regular hard disk.
Will there be any problems with having one disk still as MBR (I don't have the space needed for backing up those 2TB currently)?
You can mix MBR and GPT; however, on an EFI-based computer, Windows must boot from a GPT disk. (In a conventional setup, this means that C: must be a partition on a GPT disk.) Some EFIs also require that the ESP be on a GPT disk, although I'm not sure how common this requirement is.
It's possible to convert MBR to GPT without data loss by using gdisk, so you can easily convert your 2TB disk to GPT without doing a backup. This operation is actually safer than it might seem, since the MBR and GPT data structures are quite simple, so there's little that can go wrong compared to, say, resizing a partition. That said, there's still some risk, so if you're not booting Windows from the disk, you might want to just leave it as MBR. Also, some MBR-to-GPT conversions will require shrinking a partition, so you'd need to do that in GParted or some other tool before doing the conversion. Of course, you should always keep backups of important data.
Offline
Pages: 1