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Multi Boot, Ubuntu on 1 drive, Windows Raid 0 on 2 drives. Need to do this tonight

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hitbyaprkedcar7

Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2006
Location
Barnegat, NJ
Multi Boot, Ubuntu on 1 drive, Windows Raid 0 on 2 drives. Need to do this tonight

Let me state that i have no idea where to put this. It involves windows, linux, and storage (raid) but i figure id put this in the AOS section as im pretty sure it will be linux that gives me the problems.

Heres my scenario. I had been running raid 0 with 2 of my raptors (34gig) with windows installed on it. I have 4 raptors, but havnt had the time to add my 2 more raptors to the setup (and i cant find the sata cables i need). I found my sata cable for one of them and decided to throw Ubunutu on the one drive. Well, i went through the setup, picked the drive that didnt have windows on it, and installed. Go to boot up my computer hopeing to see a "Which OS Do you want to boot" screen, i am greeted with a "Disk Read Error". I panic, throw in the windows cd so i can look at my partitions, and i see my raid partition was formated. JSHLKHDLKJHDLKJFHLKJF. I am so ****ed. But, i got my copy of Vista Ultimate (MSDN <3) and i figured id give it a try. This is what i need.

Multi boot system, Vista on 2 raptors in raid 0, and my ubuntu on 1 raptor. I tried to get raid 0 across the 3 drives to work in ubuntu, and i just could not get it to install on my partition. I had the raid drivers set up, it just kept throwing me errors and what not. I want ubuntu on its own drive anyway.

How do i set up this multi boot system?

Oh i also need to get this set up tonight, so any answers are greatly appreciated! Thanks!
 
The way i'd do this install is with a boot disk. Install Ubuntu on it's own HD and make sure you create a boot disk. Then install XP on the other 2 drives in your array and you should be fine. All you need to do to load Linux is insert the disk.

It's been a while since i've done this so the procedure may not be totally acurate.
 
You need to install Windows first then install Ubuntu. Been a long time since I messed with Ubuntu but during the install when you get to the disk section, you should be able to select custom or something like that. As long as Ubuntu has a custom disk partitioning scheme then you can select the proper disk and the wrong ones get formatted. I think grub bootloader can handle being on a Raid partition.

Another way is if your board has a boot selection menu. Some newer Asus boards have this where you can hit F8 at the initial bios screen and select what drive to boot.
 
the important thing is to get the grub boot loader loaded onto the boot drive, by adding the drive you may have confused your motherboard and it tried to boot from the wrong drive. get your linux working and from what i hear you MAY be able to rescue your raid 0 but im not completly sure of that. after that installing windows is going to try and overwrite your boot sector so you will either need to say hell with recovering the data or end up having to install the bootloader again.
 
Is this a fake raid setup or hardware raid?
Raid from the motherboard is fake raid from what i understand and if this is what you are using make sure all three drives are not set as your raid drives, select 2 drives for your raid array then and unselect the third drive if it is selected in BIOS.

install windows on the raid array first, then install ubuntu on the nonraided drive.

now the tricky part....... i don't know if ubuntu will autodetect a fake raid windows partition and if not, i am not sure how you would manually enter that info into your grub.conf file (or menu.lst in some distros) to make grub boot windows. (i am sure there is a way)
 
Thats exactly whayt i did before though. I had windows installed on my raid 0 array (hardware raid) and then i installed ubuntu on my non raided drive. For some reason, it formatteed all of my drives. It installed ubuntu on the drive, but formatted my raid array.
 
There should be some point where you can choose custom disk partition to avoid formatting the Windows partitions. It may be obscure but look for it. You may also need to set up your Linux partitions manually using custom, such as - / - /swap - /home etc.
 
I wasnt installing ubuntu onto a partition. I was installing it on its own HDD. There wasnt any partitions on this computer. I can get windows to install on a raid array no problem, i set up the arrays in the bios and in the nvidia utility on bootup. I just need to know how to be able to pick which drive i want to boot up on bootup. I dont want to have to go into the bios, change startup order whenever i want to boot to a different OS
 
Does your board have the F8 option on the first bios screen? If so then you hit F8 then after bios initialization it will bring up a list of boot options, hard drives, optical drives, etc. Some boards have this and some don't.

During the linux install there should be an option at the end to set up grub which will give you the option what to boot also, ie Windows, Linux, Linux failsafe and so on.
 
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