Triple-Boot w/ Lion, Ubuntu and Win7

[Ratteler]

I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but I'm planning on doing things a bit differently.
I'm going to have a separate drive for each system. So OS X will have a 1.5TB partitioned drive all to itself, Windows 7 have the same, and Ubuntu will have a 750GB Drive.

I'm hoping to multi-boot by selecting a boot drive at the BIOS boot screen rather than try and get all three OS to play nice on a single boot drive.

Does any one see a problem with this setup?

 

[knouroozi]

I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but I'm planning on doing things a bit differently.
I'm going to have a separate drive for each system. So OS X will have a 1.5TB partitioned drive all to itself, Windows 7 have the same, and Ubuntu will have a 750GB Drive.

I'm hoping to multi-boot by selecting a boot drive at the BIOS boot screen rather than try and get all three OS to play nice on a single boot drive.

Does any one see a problem with this setup?

As long as OS X is installed to a partition less than 1.5TB (i.e. a 500GB for Lion, 1TB for your user folder), I don't see a problem. Windows works with everything, and Ubuntu should be fine, as long as you install Grub to the root of your 750GB drive.

As long as your hardware is compatible, OS X will be a breeze. I don't think the order of OS installation matters, but I highly suggest you seclude each OS on install, explanation here:

sda = 1.5TB Lion
sdb = 1.5TB Win7
sdc = 750GB Ubuntu (12.04 or 11.10)

Disconnect sda and sdb, and install Ubuntu, making sure that Grub is installed to the root partition. Install updates and get it working.

Then disconnect sdc and sdb, and install Windows. Update it to SP1, install your programs, do whatever you want.

Disconnect sdb and sdc, and install OS X using either the 500GB/1TB partition scheme I mentioned earlier or installing OS X to a 500GB partition, then expanding the partition to 1.5TB. I haven't tried this method (I only have a 500GB HDD), but it could have some adverse effects in the future.

Once finished the above, connect all HDDs and make sure that your Lion drive boots first in the BIOS settings.


If you decide to follow through with the 500GB/1TB partition scheme for sda, then do so before you install any programs.

The steps for moving your user folder (on a new install) are:
1. System Preferences
2. Users & Groups
3. Right click on your user
4. Advanced options
5. Change home directory to "/Volumes/partname" (without quotes), where "partname" is the name of your 1TB partition

Updated the steps required to move your user folder.
Will edit once I boot into Lion, as I am currently on Windows 7.

 

[Going Bald]

I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but I'm planning on doing things a bit differently.
I'm going to have a separate drive for each system. So OS X will have a 1.5TB partitioned drive all to itself, Windows 7 have the same, and Ubuntu will have a 750GB Drive.

I'm hoping to multi-boot by selecting a boot drive at the BIOS boot screen rather than try and get all three OS to play nice on a single boot drive.

Does any one see a problem with this setup?

4 things to remember when installing 3 OSs on separate drives, assuming you want to use Chimera to boot all of them:
1. Set the BIOS for OS X first - save & exit.
2. OS X will not install on a partition larger than 1Tb
3. Install the Grub2 bootloader to the root of the Ubuntu install, not the MBR of the HDD
4. Win7 boots from the System Reserved icon, not the Windows NTFS icon.

so, connect the first drive, install an OS, disconnect the drive
connect the second drive, install an OS, disconnect the drive
connect the third drive, install an OS, shut down.

connect all drives, boot to BIOS and make the OS X HDD first in HDD boot order, save & exit continue boot to Chimera - you should have bootable icons for all OSs.

 

[knouroozi]

I didn't want to start a new topic for this, but I'm planning on doing things a bit differently.
I'm going to have a separate drive for each system. So OS X will have a 1.5TB partitioned drive all to itself, Windows 7 have the same, and Ubuntu will have a 750GB Drive.

I'm hoping to multi-boot by selecting a boot drive at the BIOS boot screen rather than try and get all three OS to play nice on a single boot drive.

Does any one see a problem with this setup?

4 things to remember when installing 3 OSs on separate drives, assuming you want to use Chimera to boot all of them:
1. Set the BIOS for OS X first - save & exit.
2. OS X will not install on a partition larger than 1Tb
3. Install the Grub2 bootloader to the root of the Ubuntu install, not the MBR of the HDD
4. Win7 boots from the System Reserved icon, not the Windows NTFS icon.

so, connect the first drive, install an OS, disconnect the drive
connect the second drive, install an OS, disconnect the drive
connect the third drive, install an OS, shut down.

connect all drives, boot to BIOS and make the OS X HDD first in HDD boot order, save & exit continue boot to Chimera - you should have bootable icons for all OSs.

You have more experience in this field than me, so I updated my post.

I assumed that installing to the MBR would make Chimera recognize it, which would Grub, at which point you could select Ubuntu to boot (or enable Quiet Boot in Grub to skip this step, as long as the default selection is Ubuntu).

 

[Ratteler]

Thanks for the replies. I'm planning on isolating each drive for each respective install.

Other than selecting the boot drive from the BIOS, I'm not planning on having any soft boot menu.

I would love to be able to mount all the drives and copy data between them... but that's a problem for later.

I even considered getting a 5.25" removable dock for each drive, but it would be better to just have them all play nice.

On install for any OS... the only drive on the system will be the one that I'm installing too.

 

[piebaldyea]

Any update on this? I am trying to do the same thing (triple boot using 3 different hard drives). The only difference is that I have snow leopard installed and i am using chameleon, not chimera.

I have been using chameleon to dual boot snow leopard and windows 7 successfully for about a year now, and i wanted to throw Ubuntu into the mix on an ssd for a really quick boot up option.

I installed ubuntu onto the main partition of the ssd, and it wasnt recognized by chameleon. then i saw this post and re-installed it (after formatting it) to the root of the ssd, but it still isnt being recognized by by chameleon.

when i set the OSX drive to be the default, it still only gives me the option to boot into OSX or windows. I can also successfully boot into ubuntu if i select that drive from the bios menu.

anyone have any ideas on what my next troubleshooting step should be?

 

[knouroozi]

Any update on this? I am trying to do the same thing (triple boot using 3 different hard drives). The only difference is that I have snow leopard installed and i am using chameleon, not chimera.

I have been using chameleon to dual boot snow leopard and windows 7 successfully for about a year now, and i wanted to throw Ubuntu into the mix on an ssd for a really quick boot up option.

I installed ubuntu onto the main partition of the ssd, and it wasnt recognized by chameleon. then i saw this post and re-installed it (after formatting it) to the root of the ssd, but it still isnt being recognized by by chameleon.

when i set the OSX drive to be the default, it still only gives me the option to boot into OSX or windows. I can also successfully boot into ubuntu if i select that drive from the bios menu.

anyone have any ideas on what my next troubleshooting step should be?

Hope you're feeling ready for another Ubuntu re-install. This time, format your SD to have at least 1 Boot (/boot) partition, 1 Root (/) partition, and 1 Swap Area.

This should do the trick.

 

[piebaldyea]

ah great thanks! i assume i should be installing to the /boot partition?

 

[knouroozi]

ah great thanks! i assume i should be installing to the /boot partition?

In the partition manager on the Ubuntu LiveCD, give your SSD 3 partitions.

sda1: 512MB /boot
sda2: XXGB / (your root partition, however big your SSD may be)
sda3: XXGB Swap Area (1.5x the amount of physical RAM you have, so if you have 4GB of RAM make your Swap Area 6GB)

 

[Going Bald]

Re installation is not necessary - Just remove MBR, without the partition table. Boot up, open terminal and type in

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1

where sdX is your drive ID and hit enter . Then install Grub from terminal - type in:

sudo grub

hit enter. This will get you a "grub>" prompt (i.e. the grub shell). At grub> type in:

find /boot/grub/stage1

hit enter. This will return a location (hdA,1), where A is the HD and 1 is the / partition of your Ubuntu install. Next, THIS IS IMPORTANT, whatever was returned for the find command use it (you are still at grub>. when you type in the next 3 commands). Now type in:

root (hdA,1)

and hit enter. Now type in:

setup (hdA,1)

hit enter. This loads grub to your root partition. (If you created a /boot partiton, substitute that partition number in place of the / partition number.)