réjean Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 Hi all! I have Win XP already installed on a 250 GB hard drive with a few more partitions for Linux and some storage (ntfs) . I have been told for over a year by a few distros that the hard drive has bad sectors and is ready to go anytime. What I would like to do is to install it on a 2nd hard drive ( 1 TB ) which is only a few months old and already has an empty (ntfs) partition at the very beginning of the drive with a few more distros installed after it without destroying the other partitions. I have several disks like SuperGrub that would let me take back the control of the MBR bootloader ( which is presently controlled by PCLinuxOS )., I would like a fresh install of Win XP and not a clone. Once it is working I would format the previous XP partition and use it either for another Linux distro or for another storage partition ( or maybe keep it to play games and if I loose it then I don't care ). Any suggestion anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 What you propose to do is easy. Just unplug the older drive first. Install the new one and install Windows on it FIRST. Then plug your old drive back in. Make sure your boot order in BIOS skips the older drive. Now you can install Linux and other goodies on the new drive. One note, though... BEWARE: MS Windows does not like more than one installation of MS Windows on a system. I had mucho issues trying to get GRUB to differentiate between Win XP and Win 7 when had them both on my ericsbane03 a year or so ago. There were lots of tricks and hacks I had to do to make it work. It wasn't worth the effort. By the way, a few bad sectors does NOT a broken drive make. An older drive on my main system has been installed in three different systems over the past six years. It has a few bad sectors, but all tests state the drive is healthy. *knocking on wood* Luck with it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted April 23, 2012 Author Share Posted April 23, 2012 Unplugging the active hard drive before installing XP on the other one was my first thought, Eric. But what your are saying is that I couldn't install XP on the first partition of the 2nd hd without loosing the other partitions? And that I would have to reinstall CentOS and OpenSUSE? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 You can install Windows on that first ntfs partition on the 1TB drive. Isn't that what you were wanting to do? That should go fine without losing any of the other OSs on that drive. However, Windows will take over the mbr of the 1TB drive once it's installed. You can recover GRUB from whichever distro you have on that 1TB without much trouble, though. Or if you use a GRUB on the other drive, then it should still be in place when you plug that drive back in. You'll just have to modify the GRUB to boot the new Windows on the 1TB drive. What I was saying is that if you have a Win installation on the 1TB drive and one on the other drive, you may have issues with GRUB recognizing and booting them separately. I did on my system. Maybe you'll get lucky. Ya' never know. If what I typed just above here confuses you, You're not alone. It even sounded confusing to me when I read it back just now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted April 24, 2012 Author Share Posted April 24, 2012 Thanks Eric! It sounds like I am all set to go either tonight or tomorrow. I just didn't want to lose the distros on the 1 TB if I could help it. Once installed I'll adjust the Grub which is on the 250 GB drive. Hopefully a ' chainloader +1 " trick will do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 Have a FUN adventure, Réjean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted April 24, 2012 Share Posted April 24, 2012 What I would like to do is to install it on a 2nd hard drive ( 1 TB ) which is only a few months old and already has an empty (ntfs) partition at the very beginning of the drive with a few more distros installed after it without destroying the other partitions. I have several disks like SuperGrub that would let me take back the control of the MBR bootloader ( which is presently controlled by PCLinuxOS )., >rejean +++++++++++++++ Just as insurance, take a copy of the MBR on the 1-tb drive, and also get a copy of the menu.lst file you are currently using -- store them some place on one of your linux partitions. I assume you are not talking about any repartitioning of the disk? That would surely affect your linux installs. Installing XP onto an existing first partition will not affect the others. Tell XP to use the existing partition. XP will take over the MBR when it is installed. Here, I find it most convenient to use grub4dos to boot my linux parts, needing only a one-line edit to XP's boot.ini file. Then, on booting you will get the option of continuing to windows or choosing to run grub [i.e., grldr] to display menu.lst and boot your choice linux distro. You really only need to extract the one file 'grldr' from the grub4dos zip. I'd also get 'grub.exe'. The edit to boot.ini consists of adding one line at the bottom ... C:\grldr="Linux menu" and then you'll copy your previous menu.lst file into C:\ where grldr will find it. Thereafter, so long as you keep XP, you will never have to worry about the MBR or booting, you'll just add new or changed distros to that menu.lst that now sits in your C: partition. Your previous distros will boot just as they did before, except that now it'll be grldr that loads them, not grub. It is possible [likely, actually] you'll need to edit the 'root (hd1,x)' statements in your current menu.lst file [to read instead 'root (hd0,x)'], IF your bios is currently set to boot to the drive you intend to replace. If you are currently first booting from the 1-tb drive then menu.lst should work as-is. I would disconnect the older drive while doing the install -- gives you more options if something should go wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted April 25, 2012 Author Share Posted April 25, 2012 Thanks for the suggestions burningbush but some of them sound awfully complicated to me. Like for example " take a copy of the MBR " how, where, why. Why would I want to replace the Grub that is on PCLinuxOS ( sda2, which is on the 233 GB ) and control the MBR, and that I am familiar with, have no problem editing the menu.lst, with a Grub4dos that I have never used, don't know anything about and don't really trust ( or to be more precise do not trust my mastering of )? It took me a little while to move from Lilo to Grub but now that I am familiar with it why would I want to change? Before installing any new distro I always send myself a copy of menu.lst via Yahoo so that if anything goes wrong or I want to use the new distro's bootloader ( or a few times not lately I forgot to tell the new distro to install it's bootloader on it's own / partition ), then I can get my other distros back without having to mount everyone and copy it's first bootloader's entry into the menu.lst I want to use from now on. I am also aware that " XP will take over the MBR when it is installed ". This is why I have Super Grub so that I can boot back into PCLinuxOS and do a " grub-install /dev/hda ". As for; It is possible [likely, actually] you'll need to edit the 'root (hd1,x)' statements in your current menu.lst file [to read instead 'root (hd0,x)'], IF your bios is currently set to boot to the drive you intend to replace. If you are currently first booting from the 1-tb drive then menu.lst should work as-is. Again, for now I do not intend to give control of the MBR to anything else but the Grub on PCLinuxOS ( which is on the 233 GB ( sda ) after I install WinXP ( which I know will take control of the MBR ) and after I run SuperGrub. But obviously if I decide to give either CentOS or OpenSUSE or another distro that I might install on the 1 TB drive ( possibly ArchLinux ) then I will have to change all the sda, hda, hd0,hd1 in the new Grub. Finally "I would disconnect the older drive while doing the install -- gives you more options if something should go wrong." is definitely what I intend to do because the 233 GB is still my main drive, the one with my /storage partition ( although I have been copying most of the important data unto another partition on the 1 TB drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted April 25, 2012 Author Share Posted April 25, 2012 I forgot one thing; On my 1 TB I have a 1st partition sdb1 ( 40 GB ) set as ntfs-3g and another one sdb10 ( 488 GB ) set also as ntfs-3g that I am using for storage also. Will Win XP use the 1st one ( which I want ) or try to use the 2nd . It seems to me that XP always want to install itself on the first available partition. Am I right? Thanks everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 No. The XP installer allows you to pick whatever partition you want to install Windows on. However, Windows is usually more comfortable on the first partition. You get to choose. By the way, the file system is NTFS. ntfs-3g is a linux driver that allows access to NTFS file systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Why would I want to replace the Grub that is on PCLinuxOS ( sda2, which is on the 233 GB ) and control the MBR, and that I am familiar with, have no problem editing the menu.lst, with a Grub4dos that I have never used, don't know anything about and don't really trust ( or to be more precise do not trust my mastering of )? It took me a little while to move from Lilo to Grub but now that I am familiar with it why would I want to change? >rejean +++++++++++++ Well ... there is no visible difference between linux grub and grub4dos -- there is no learning curve, and your existing menu.lst will work as-is. Whatever you do, you are going to have to replace the current grub after you install windows; it would be simpler to do it with grub4dos -- and then if you want to replace PCLinuxOS at some later date, you won't have to re-do the whole booting thing over (and over and over) again. This presumes you won't be replacing XP as often as linux distros get swapped. If you switch booting from the current drive, i.e., change the boot order in your bios setup, then you will also have to edit menu.lst -- if that stays the same, then disregard the edit of menu.lst, won't be necessary. How to save a copy of your drive's MBR sector ... #dd if=/dev/sda of=sda.mbr bs=512 count=1 and then copy that file from the current directory to somewhere off the hard disk. To restore it, just reverse the if and the of in that command. This is something every linux experimenter should do, and then take a new copy whenever you modify a partition on the disk, or reset the grub as you plan to do. Having these available has saved my day many times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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