Multiboot question:Can Lion be installed 'after' another OS?

[Steve_God]

Planning on using UniBeast to create a bootable USB - however my query is:

On all the guides for multi-boots, it references installing OS X first and creating the petitions through Disk Utility, and only installing other OS's 'after'.
Can OS X be installed on an empty partition after other OS's have been installed?

 

[alux]

i think the problem is with the boot loader because you need to use any other than the boot loader of windows to start MacOS AFAIK, so to put this in perspective, you can have one disk in which you can install the boot loader, and from there you can install MacOS in one partition and Windows or any other OS in another partition. When you boot your machine this boot loader let you select from which partition to boot, from there you can choose any OS you have installed in any partition.

 

[Going Bald]

Planning on using UniBeast to create a bootable USB - however my query is:

On all the guides for multi-boots, it references installing OS X first and creating the petitions through Disk Utility, and only installing other OS's 'after'.
Can OS X be installed on an empty partition after other OS's have been installed?

Yes, with this proviso: the hard drive must be formatted with GUID partition tables in order to install OS X. You can use the OS X installer to partition the hard drive and exit the installer without installing OS X or you can use any 3rd party app of your choice to format the drive as long as that app is capable of formatting it with GUID partition tables. Then boot your other OS install media and install it.
Be aware that if you install any of the Linux distros like Ubuntu that, if you want to use a Chameleon/Chimera bootloader, Grub2 must be installed to root ( / ) or a partition from the Linux root such as /boot, not to the default drive MBR.

 

[stargazer418]

I'd recommend to not even bother with partitions and just buy a cheap second hard drive. Disconnect the current drive, connect the new one, install Lion, then plug in the original one and make sure the BIOS is set to boot from the OS X drive. Chameleon/Chimera automatically recognizes the OSs on the other drive, so you can boot to them by pressing any button during the countdown.

 

[Steve_God]

Cheers for the advice guys!

Given my set-up is on a 120Gb SSD, where I ideally want all 3 OS's (Windows 7 / Lion / uBuntu), I re-formatted to set-up the GUID partition table to get Lion to install, and installed Grub to the uBuntu partition. (I've also used gptsync to re-sync the partition tables)

All 3 OS's now boot fine from Chimera on the Unibeast bootable USB drive - the only issue now is Chimera won't load from the drive without crashing :-/ Going to give another bootloader a try tonight and see if that will solve the issue!

 

[georgeba]

the only issue now is Chimera won't load from the drive without crashing :-/

With booting three OS-s from a single drive this will be a repeating "feature" of your machine, constant headache for one reason or another. Take the advice of stargazer418 and get a discrete drive.

 

[Steve_God]

Got it fixed! Just had to set GraphicsEnabler=No
Turned out it wasn't crashing, the blank screen was just the GraphicsEnabler setting stopping the graphics card from working properly.

Cheers for the help guys!