MBR HDD and installing arch

knrgy · 2016-08-26 13:15:14

I currently dual boot Win7 and Fedora24. Before this I had win7 and ubuntu which I then attempted to triple boot win7, ubuntu, and fedora. Unfortunately my hard drive doesn't allow more than two OS's because of how it's formatted or something and so I dropped ubuntu and fedora was simple to install with the GUI. Currently I want to try and install Arch but I'm sure I'll run into the same "only two OS's" are allowed problem.. Is my only option deleting either win7 or fedora? Because I kinda like them both already.

Also the problem I had with installing three os's was because my HDD is MBR and here's and old thread I posted asking for help to this problem a while back.

Last edited by knrgy (2016-08-26 13:44:33)

Trilby · 2016-08-26 13:36:55

Welcome to the forums. First, please edit your post and chose a meaningful title.

There is no limit to the number of OSs on a harddisk. MBR partition tables do have some limitations: I believe it is 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary and a large number of logical partitions. Your BIOS can only boot to a primary partition: but you will only ever have one partition marked as the BIOS boot partition. From there you'd chainload other OSs.

You can often even have multiple OSs share a boot partition - this is much easier with linuxes than it might be with Windows (perhaps because of my ignorance of Windows, but it often likes to have complete control of the partition and may modify/damage linux-related stuff there).

knrgy · 2016-08-26 13:59:49

So I found a youtube tutorial showing how to convert from mbr to gpt without data loss. Should I follow it? He mentions in a comment that windows will be unbootable after but the data wont bet lost.

Last edited by knrgy (2016-08-26 14:04:11)

Trilby · 2016-08-26 14:04:16

knrgy wrote:

I found a youtube tutorial ... Should I follow it?

Generally the answer to this is no.

But the first question to ask is whether you should convert to GPT. I was thinking of suggesting that as an option. But first you absolutely must have a full back up of everything. Second, you probably also want to be sure you have the ability to reinstall Windows, i.e. do you have the install/rescue/whatever disk?

If loss of all data currently on the disk would not be acceptable, don't try converting. Even it if may be possible to do so without data loss, plan for the worst. If this could be acceptable, then go for it (I still have no idea if that youtube video would be a good guide or not).

EDIT: thanks for the new title, this is much better.

bgc1954 · 2016-08-26 14:33:09

Definitely heed Trilby's advice and backup anything that you deem valueable but my two cents worth is to stick with MBR. It's working for you now so why give yourself a whole lot of other headaches with gpt. Windows allows you to shrink a partition with their Disk Management tool but there may be a limit as to how much it will shrink it. I remember using that once and I didn't get as much space freed up as I wanted so I used gparted to resize the partition as I had an installation disk available and had nothing valueable on windows so I was willing to risk a reinstall. The safest would be to try the windows tool first and see what you get. I once had 25 linux os's on a 250 GB disk using MBR so it is definitely possible.

Then once you free up some space, enlarge your 4th extended partition and make as many logical partitons as you need. It would likely be easiest to reinstall Fedora on a new partition once you set up your hdd like you want but you could also do that after installing Arch.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2016-08-26 14:42:26)

alphaniner · 2016-08-26 15:03:21

I don't see any indication that your mobo is UEFI capable. Strictly speaking, Windows doesn't support booting to GPT on BIOS systems. Furthermore, the basic partition layout it creates for GPT is different to the one for MBR.

But there's no need to switch anyway. Logical partitions (or better yet Logical Volumes) are the solution here.

jmp186 · 2016-08-28 01:50:26

always backup

Going from ubuntu/fedora to arch might take time, and folowing video tutorials are not a good idea. Arch have this insanly good wiki with (if not everything) a lots of useful information about how to install arch and getting a working system : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

If your motherboard is UEFI capable, it's not a bad idea to go for the uefi boot process and gpt partition, especially with windows (it will be faster too, and uefi is tailored for multiboot). LVM is great but it's a linux only tool and it'll not give you the flexibility of gpt for your windows system (you totaly can do lvm with gpt for your linuxes systems of course).

if your motherboard can't do UEFI, i would stick with mbr, for windows.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-08-26 13:15:14

MBR HDD and installing arch

#2 2016-08-26 13:36:55

Re: MBR HDD and installing arch

#3 2016-08-26 13:59:49

Re: MBR HDD and installing arch

#4 2016-08-26 14:04:16

Re: MBR HDD and installing arch

#5 2016-08-26 14:33:09

Re: MBR HDD and installing arch

#6 2016-08-26 15:03:21

Re: MBR HDD and installing arch

#7 2016-08-28 01:50:26

Re: MBR HDD and installing arch

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