best way to do triple or quad boot system?

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I finally finished upgrading our PC that died a few weeks back. I've replaced everything except 1 of the DVD burners, the speakers that fit into one of the 5 1/4" drive bays and the case itself. The new power supply is VERY quiet compared to my old one, and I've got a 2 Terabyte hard drive instead of the old 300 Gigabyte one.

Anyway, this is primarily going to be an offline (not Internet connected) game machine for my kids. I can pop a wifi dongle on there for a bit if I need to download a game for them, but otherwise it won't be connected to the Internet on purpose, so they don't end up playing browser games where my 4 year old is decapitating zombies and laughing, or clicking on ads and downloading crapware onto my PC.

I'd like to have Windows XP on there for backward compatibility for some really old games and a few educational CD's that we like.

I'd also like to have Windows 8.1, since it should work well with the most modern games, drivers & peripherals. (and offer an easy upgrade to Windows 9, when it comes out)

About 5 years ago, I played around with Ubuntu Linux and Linux Mint, and I think there is at least 1 other variant/fork/flavor of Linux that I'd like to try.

I seem to recall Ubuntu having a pretty decent boot menu that allowed me to pick between the different operating systems. However, I've also heard that 8.1 doesn't play well with these other operating systems any more - almost as if Microsoft didn't want people to have other operating systems installed.

I guess my questions are these:

1) Can you still set up an easy multi boot system with Windows 8 as one of the operating systems? (or do you HAVE to go with Windows 7 to avoid headaches?)

2) after partitioning the hard drive, does it matter what order the operating systems are installed?

Thanks so much!

 

[Dahak]

Now I have not multiboot windows and linux.

It should be ok now, it might have been when windows 8 first came out that it would have issues. but to be honest i have not tried or looked into it.

Most of that was due to oem lockdown/ Secure Boot in the bios. As long as that is turned off you should be fine as well

Generally for windows releases you want to install the oldest version first (XP) then add the newer one (win8)

 

[Elixer]

Well, the rule of thumb is, install all windows operating systems first (XP to win8.1, in that order), then do linux.
The reason for this is because MS will overwrite the bootloader (grub/grub2/whatever), since they could care less about anything else except windows.
Then, when you install linux it will find all the windows entries, and create the correct boot loader info for each OS you got.

 

[pw257008]

Then, when you install linux it will find all the windows entries, and create the correct boot loader info for each OS you got.

hopefully*

 

[postmortemIA]

yep order suggested by Elixer is the right way to do it. Windows 8 bootloader will happily boot Windows XP as well, so Linux will have only to recognize windows 8 boot loader, and in this age they all do. Last time windows boot loader changed was for windows vista. this is assuming you are not going to use UEFI.

 

[corkyg]

Not advocating my solution - it is different. I prefer independent drives fully installed with the same software, each easily selectable by using EZ-Swap 4 trayless racks. This gives me full independence of each OS without multi-boot. This illustrates:

 

[JackMDS]

Same Idea as corkyg's (Not visualy so nice :hmm: ).

The top are mobile trays with 1TB HDs used for Data Storage/Backups (can be used as boot too if needed, and other purposes as well).

The key is the 2.5" tray at the bottom (red arrow pointing).

It take 10 sec. to switch in and out these trays.

I keep a collection of them, all with SSD drives (can be used with regular Laptop's drives as well).

The two OCZs are 64GB, one with win 7 and the other with Win 8.1 (XP SP3 runs Virtual on the Win7).

The center tray is Talent 32GB with Mountain Lion (the computer is capable to be configured for OSX).

Can Not be more flexible and stable than such arrangement.

Vantec Mobil Rack - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817986002

Extra trays - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817986004

 

[Elixer]

Heh, I have done what Jack & Corky have mentioned...though, I don't bother swapping the drives out. I just tell the BIOS which drive to boot from, and all is well.

BTW Corky, nice setup.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

Hmm, that is an interesting solution. What I would really prefer would be big buttons (or a throw switch!) on the front of the PC, each labelled with the OS I wanted to boot into. Pushing one would disconnect the others, and each button would connect the power to each drive.

As such, I could select which drive (and OS) I wanted to boot to by simply pushing the power button of the relevant drive before powering on the system. I guess this would have been easier to do back when the power was through the larger wires of a molex connector. I'm not sure how difficult something like this would be to do with SATA power.

 

[Elixer]

They do make cases like what you want... Hot-Swappable SATA with independent power switch...
http://www.abs.com/Products/ProductDetail.aspx?ViewPage=1&ID=11 is just one example, and a expensive example at that...

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've had bad luck dual booting 7, because it has some kind of special partition it creates. If that partition is touched or the windows partition is touched all hell breaks loose and the system will never boot again. It CAN be done, it's just a royal pain.

What I would do is put all the Windows OSes on one drive, and Linux on another. Make the Linux one the primary, it will find the Windows drive and offer it as a boot option. I think you may end up with two boot menus though, but I could be mistaken.

The hot swap trays are another option too if you don't care about a menu and just want to physically swap the drives around. This is good for a test machine too, as you may not want something you do to mess up another OS.

For a power toggle switch, you could have a toggle switch for each drive's power. Or if you want to do something fancy look at arduino and use relays and LEDs with a single push button to toggle each OS. That actually sounds like a fun project, I want to do that now. :biggrin:

 

[jolancer]

playing with racks and bios probably works, tho i wouldn't recommend it for fulltime option for kids. hell most adults would probably end up breaking something like that

dual booting xp is easy. i havn't used win7/8 but with my previous experience and random things iv heard. If i were to this is how i might attempt it...

1 ) install win8 leave enough unallocated space for the rest of your OS partitions
2 ) after win8 is installed at the front of the drive can then format the rest of your partitions and win8 i would assume won't fuck withem because its already installed/setup
3 ) install XP, on the 3rd partition because win8 uses 2partitions i assume?
4 ) install linux on 4th partion

you'd want to pre plan your partition sizes. if your using MBR for XP compatability your fourth partition you might want to be an /Extended Primary ,so you can create 5 or more partitions for data storage. I personally don't like to mix filesystem formats between volumes on extended partitions.. between windows and linux specifically, i try and keep just one using the extended if they arn't sharing a common filesystem like FAT32 for example.

you can also use linux's 'DD' command to backup you MBR at every stage of the setup process. that way you can also undo or temporairly undo the duel boot if you chose.

Backup example
$ dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/dir/mbr.img bs=512 count=1
Restore example
$ dd if=/mnt/dir/mbr.img of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

not as useful but if your playing around with stuff in the process and would like to backup the partition table in stages aswell linux 'sfdisk' command can do it.

Backup example
$ sfdisk -d /dev/sda > partitions.txt
Recover example
$ sfdisk -f /dev/sda < partitions.txt

 

[yinan]

Virtual machines.

 

[postmortemIA]

Buying enclosure doesn't sound like best way for me. .. When it can be done for free and hassle free.

 

[nOOky]

I triple boot XP/7/8.1 no Linux, but I use 3 separate ssd's for each OS, then Windows 8 lets me choose which disk to boot to on startup or I just let it load 8 if I choose not to choose.

If you have spare hdd's around I'd say that's the way to go, especially if you don't want to loose everything at once should that one disk with all the OS's fail.

 

[sm625]

Hmm, that is an interesting solution. What I would really prefer would be big buttons (or a throw switch!) on the front of the PC, each labelled with the OS I wanted to boot into. Pushing one would disconnect the others, and each button would connect the power to each drive.

You could do this more or less with simple double throw toggle switches. Just wire the switches into the +12V and +5V power rails into each sata device. If the sata device has no power it will not be seen by the motherboard and will not boot from that device. It would take more work to make only one switch active, but you can get a panel of switches like that too.

Here's an example of a simple switch panel:

http://www.thewatercoolingshop.co.u...or-6x-rocker-switches-square-black-70109.html