Arch Linux

palinux

Member

Registered: 2009-09-15

Posts: 21

Partitions in a dual boot

Hi guys, i'm having difficulties with my dual boot installation (W7 and archlinux) regarding to partitions.

I've been using Arch for about 5-6 years in my other laptop as a unique operating system without any trouble, but in these one i HAVE to keep W7 and when i was trying to install a few doubts came to my head.

1.- My laptop has 3 NTFS partitions: the one that W7 creates to boot with 100mb, the one that contains W7, and a nother one for my data. When i run cfdisk i can only create one more primary partition, then i have to create extended ones.

First question: I have to create /boot, / and /home (just for configuration issues), but I dont know which one to let primary and wich one extended. I assume that the /boot partition need to be a primary partition and the other ones can be extended. Is that OK?

Second question: Which partition(s) should I let booteable considering grub as my boot loader? only the windows's one? /boot only? both of them?

Third question: Can i use/delete the W7 boot partition (100 mb) to use it as a /boot partition without having troubles?

After that, can I go on like a normal installation and (obviously modifying grub to let him read windows)

thanks in advanced

Last edited by palinux (2015-03-26 14:41:06)

runical

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2012-03-03

Posts: 896

Re: Partitions in a dual boot

As far as I know, you can boot from extended partitions as well (long time ago when I did so, but I remember it not being a problem). However, do note that /boot is not always needed, nor is a separate /home. If you are willing to play around with your partitions you can set up your Windows data partition on an extended partition together with /home and root. The you can use the "leftover" primary partition to house /boot.

As for the bootable part, I have no idea. My guess would be to set both to bootable, even though grub will be loading the OS (not the BIOS), so it is probably not needed.

And as always, refer to the marvelous wiki. Also look into if this laptop has UEFI hardware, because then you don't really need grub.

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