Tips for setting up dual boot.

[Melvang]

Hey guys in light of this hard drive crash I have been told to try mounting it to a linux box.  I have a decent system and have been considering dual boot for a while with Ubuntu.  Partly for this and partly to bypass the windows 8 winavr issues when trying to compile firmware. 

The last time I had dual boot was XP Home with RC version of Win 7.  Any tips for setting up dual boot with Win 8 64 bit and Ubuntu?  What exactly would I want to look for as far as downloads and would it be easier to set up a boot disk or thumb drive.  I don't think I have done either.

[Melvang]

Along with this question would anyone have any suggestions on which distro to use?

[IvanIvanovich]

If you're not going to use it a lot, I would just recommend setting up a live linux on a fast usb3 stick and add persistence. That way you can keep settings and userdata between reboots.
Otherwise, if you are going to use it a lot, install windows on one disk first, then install linux on another. Set the linux disk as first boot, add a chainload entry in grub for Windows with a timeout menu... set whichever you use most as default.

[user 18]

I like Linux Mint a bit more than Ubuntu for a serious business desktop machine.

Crunchbang for a lightweight box.

Definitely use separate disks instead of partitions.

[Melvang]

Thanks for the tips guys.  I have been looking into details on running WoW and solidworks via Ubuntu.  It looks like technically it *can* work but there are a fair amount of bugs and issues with SW in Wine and WoW has general crappy preformance with Wine.

I do have 3 drives in my PC,  a 74Gb raptor, a 300Gb raptor, and a 400Gb Hitachi.  I think I am going to go with Win on the 74 as its already there, and Linux on the 300.

[Melvang]

any particular reason why on installing ubuntu on a different drive instead of another partition on the same drive?

[fohat.digs]

any particular reason why on installing ubuntu on a different drive instead of another partition on the same drive?

I am interested in this, too.

I have done it both ways, several times each, in combinations of Windows XP/7 with Ubuntu 10.04/12.04.

Placing Ubuntu in a small partition at the back of a large Windows drive has always worked properly without a hitch, but installed on discreet drives has always failed eventually.

Sometimes the install itself fails, sometimes the install goes perfectly but some days/weeks/months later it simply stops working and I have to do something drastic like install Windows alone. It would have seemed that going into BIOS and setting whichever drive as the default boot drive would have been enough, but no. That would be the most reliable route, in my opinion.

[user 18]

I guess it really is just anecdotal, but I've always had better success installing on separate drives.

[IvanIvanovich]

I've always liked installing on separate drives so grub dosen't replace the Windows bootloader. When I used to use linux regularly I seemed to have a knack for breaking it. At least then I could still boot the Windows disk to get onto something.
Now I just have a re-purposed thin client I picked up for cheap. I don't use linux much anymore unless I have to and I can just tuck it away since it's pretty small. Some of the more recent thin clients you can get have dual core atoms or similar which are powerful enough for simple tasks and can be had for a fraction of something like a zotac zbox, acer revo, or other similar nettop which are more or less the same thing as the thin clients.

[jdcarpe]

I really really like Ubuntu, more specifically Xubuntu, which uses the XFCE desktop environment. It installs quickly, and almost always just works, out of the box.

Be sure you have Windows installed first if you plan on dual booting. Your Linux distro will recognize that there is a Windows partition or drive, and will give you the option in GRUB to boot to Windows. Even if you install to a different drive, you can then choose to boot that drive by default, and select which OS you want to boot.

[dorkvader]

I really really like Ubuntu, more specifically Xubuntu, which uses the XFCE desktop environment. It installs quickly, and almost always just works, out of the box.

Be sure you have Windows installed first if you plan on dual booting. Your Linux distro will recognize that there is a Windows partition or drive, and will give you the option in GRUB to boot to Windows. Even if you install to a different drive, you can then choose to boot that drive by default, and select which OS you want to boot.

This was certainly true for w7 but w8 likes to play with uefi and can cause trouble. Since it doesn't like to play nice, I recommend you use a separate drive, though it is indeed possible to just partition it.



I recommend mint as it's based on debian like Ubuntu and includes some useful packages by default (flash player and MP3 playback, etc.) I use crunchbang as my daily though. (gnome is too slow and heavy and xfce is the new gnome)

You can actually use the windows bootloader to select if you want to run linux or windows, but it is easier to just replace it with grub or whatever.

Of course I gave up on dual boot when W8 came out so all I know about is getting it working with W7.

[Melvang]

Ubuntu is installed on the 300 gb raptor drive.

running the stuff on this page http://howtoubuntu.org/things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu-14-04-trusty-tahr

[jdcarpe]

This site also has some good advice for things to do after a new install of Ubuntu:

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/first

[Melvang]

OK so I got ubuntu running and plugged my other windows formatted drives into the PC (while shut down).  Problem is they do show up but I am getting a non zero exit status from windows, so they won't mount.  Any suggestions?

Could this be because before I do anything in my PC, I unplug the power cord and then hit the power button to disperse any power in capaciters before doing anything else?  Windows was shut down normally last time I used it.

[dorkvader]

OK so I got ubuntu running and plugged my other windows formatted drives into the PC (while shut down).  Problem is they do show up but I am getting a non zero exit status from windows, so they won't mount.  Any suggestions?

Could this be because before I do anything in my PC, I unplug the power cord and then hit the power button to disperse any power in capaciters before doing anything else?  Windows was shut down normally last time I used it.

If that's like the problem where you hibernate windows and then can't mount it on linux, you can ignore than and force it to mount. Is this W7 or 8? I would expect 8 to do some stunt like that.

1. run

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sudo fdisk (type in your password) to see where your windows is should be like /dev/sdb1 or something

then

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mkdir /media/win/
sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /media/win -o force It might want you to do "ntfs-3g" or something.
Sudo means run the command with root privs. That's why it needs the password. mount puts the filesystem on the drive somewhere you can access it. like you put stuff on a shelf i guess. option -t is for type. That's NTFS /dev/sda1 is the location of the drive and partition from the previous command that you want to mount. /media/win is the directory you want to put it and the option -o force means it will ignore errors and just try to mount it anyway.

you should now be able to access your windows files in the /media/win/ directory from the command line or GUI file browser (I think ubuntu uses nautilus but I switched to "better" distros in 2008 so idk)

Shutting down fully and cold booting after it's been off for a while should have no effect either way.


oh it can be unsafe to just run commands you find online as root, that's why I explained what it does. I recommend reading the manual for the commands listed to know more, but if you just need to mount the drive and get at the files this should do it for you.

manual can usually be accessed by the following:

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man mount or

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man fdiskor online of course.

[Geotig]

OK so I got ubuntu running and plugged my other windows formatted drives into the PC (while shut down).  Problem is they do show up but I am getting a non zero exit status from windows, so they won't mount.  Any suggestions?

Could this be because before I do anything in my PC, I unplug the power cord and then hit the power button to disperse any power in capaciters before doing anything else?  Windows was shut down normally last time I used it.

Hi, I'm new to the forums, but Windows 8 have gave me some problems like the ones you describe. This issue happens because W8 doesn't turn off, it always hibernates (or does something like that). You have to disable this feature because it can interfere with grub in some uefi systems, and it doesn't let you mount the disks normaly. Google that and most probably your problems will go away.

Just make sure to run

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sudo update-grub
from the terminal in ubuntu so the Windows entries are entered in the grub boot menu.

Good luck!

Geotig

[jameslr]

For a damaged drive or corrupted file system you should perform a sector copy of the disk from a live cd to a stable hard drive. Then you can just use the image directly to recover the files you need. Using the drive longer may increase the risk of further data loss.