Triple Boot

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi,

I have windows running on an SSD - C Drive and all my data is connected via x4hdds on drive D. I purchased another HDD which I want to break down into two partitions/drives and install hackintosh on one partition/drive and ubuntu on the other. So I'll have Windows on 1 SSD and Linux + Mac on 1 normal cheapie HDD.

Question is, how would I go about getting everything set up?

There's a million sites on this but each one is not quite the setup that I've got, so I'm not sure how to go about this.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

So, hachintosh+linux+windows, that's a lot to pursue, is this your first hackintosh project? Maybe not so much, see this thread.

 

[Stratus_ss]

If this was my first time attempting something like this I would unplug (physically) all the hard drives I didnt want to accidently overwrite with data and the proceed. The downside of this method is that you would have to use your bios to select your boot device but it is the safest especially for first-timers

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Thanks ihrsetrdr, good lead, have been banging my head trying to get a bootable USB for Mac OS happening, getting close. I have a bootable disk for Ubuntu now, haven't tried using it yet but I'm confident it should work flawlessly considering I've installed Mint many years ago without any issues.

Stratus_ss, no need for the concern, all my drives are pretty idiot proof in terms of recognisability. My windows data drive is 1.9TB for the data, 250GB for the installation partition and the drive I'm trying to install Linux and Mac OS onto is 1Tb. No mistaking what's what.

The questions I haven't managed to find any info that I found useful are:

1.) How should I go about formatting and breaking my 1Tb into two partitions (1 for Mac one for Ubuntu)? Should I do it in Windows? Or is this done during the installation process of respective OSs? From what I'm seeing, one option is to format the drives during installation process.

2.) How do I go about getting a bootloader happening for my wonky build? As I said, 2 OSs on one disk and windows on a separate SSD! I know you can just press F12 and select where to boot from, but I'd rather have a boot loader of some kind. Not sure at what stage this is added and from what source.

I don't remember how it worked when I installed mint, but I figure adding Mac OS to the mix complicates things somewhat?

 

[ihrsetrdr]

I gotta run, and have more to say on this, but i just wanted to mention that a boot manager called rEFInd (forked from the rEFIt Project) would historically be the way to dual boot OS X and say Windows. I actually don't know right off hand if grub bootloader can handle a dual boot with OS X, just don't know. Now, with an h-tosh OS in the picture, that may require a loader which may or may not play well with grub or rEFInd. Interesting project!



Edited for blindness and just crappy spelling.

 

[||Console||]

My suggestion unplug windows/data , Install Linux it will have partition sizes in the installer leave half for free .
Find what boot loader works well with mac , use that then install OSX .
Then use bios to switch between .

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Ok thanks guys, will try these suggestions.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Got around to trying to install everything again. Spent a few hours looking for tutorials and reading articles about all this and I think I finally sort of get it. Before you install an OS you need to:

1.) Create a bootable device. Not sure why this is necessary given that we're installing a new OS onto a fresh HDD. So there's really nothing that needs to be loaded by the computer i.e. the OS since it's not installed yet. But anyway...

2.) Format a hard drive. For Ubuntu, you can do NTFS. For Mac you need exFAT.

3.) Simply restart and install from a bootable device to commence installation process.

Now that sounds simple and it is, but I'm now stuck.

I simply burned an ubuntu image onto a DVD which basically means the DVD is now worthless because I didn't make it bootable. Not sure how to do it either but basically I am now on the path of trying to create a bootable USB. So I used Rufus and tried to create a bootable USB but failed. Well, the formatting didn't fail, but when I restart my computer and boot from the USB, the computer does the POST and then gets stuck on the "Verifying DMI pool data" screen. Not sure what went wrong any ideas?

I have so far split my new HDD into two equal partitions and formatted the first one to NTFS for Linux. Haven't tried formatting the second partition to exFAT yet for Mac. Not sure how to do it yet, suggestions welcome. For some reason I don't see an option to partition the HDD to exFAT in Disk Management or if I right click and select 'format'. The option is there my USB but not for my spinny HDD.

 

[knoober]

Im not an expert so take with a grain of salt:

Got around to trying to install everything again. Spent a few hours looking for tutorials and reading articles about all this and I think I finally sort of get it. Before you install an OS you need to:

1.) Create a bootable device. Not sure why this is necessary given that we're installing a new OS onto a fresh HDD. So there's really nothing that needs to be loaded by the computer i.e. the OS since it's not installed yet. But anyway...

When you hit the power switch on your PC the first thing that happens is the Power On Self Test (or POST) happens. The system BIOS checks your ram/cpu/HDD and other I/O (not neccesarily in that order) for any troubles. There is usually a splash screen with the motherboard brand and some quick text that will not matter unless POST fails. After that there is a search for a bootable device, either a HDD or USB stick or DVD (some form of media). If you do not make bootable media your machine will just sit there staring at you because you need a way to tell the hardware what you want it to do (the OS). Here are a couple of links that have better explanations that I just gave:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/POST-Power-On-Self-Test
http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/definition/boot

I just grabbed these links from google and gave them a qquick once over to make sure they agreed with what I was saying, so if there is a source you like better or you feel has more info than these ... cool.

2.) Format a hard drive. For Ubuntu, you can do NTFS. For Mac you need exFAT.

Im not sure this is right at all. Im pretty sure you can use a variety of file systems for Ubuntu but I dont think NTFS will work. What (I think) is generally done for dual/triple boot situaltions is to put Ubuntu/Linux on its native file system (in the case of Ubuntu I think easiest is ext4, not necessarily best) and make a separate NTFS partition that can be shared by Windows or Linux or Mac (pretty sure NTFS can be seen by all of them).

I simply burned an ubuntu image onto a DVD which basically means the DVD is now worthless because I didn't make it bootable. Not sure how to do it either but basically I am now on the path of trying to create a bootable USB. So I used Rufus and tried to create a bootable USB but failed. Well, the formatting didn't fail, but when I restart my computer and boot from the USB, the computer does the POST and then gets stuck on the "Verifying DMI pool data" screen. Not sure what went wrong any ideas?

Verify that your download did not become corrupted by using the md5 checksum for your image. This thread has instructions for how to check the integrity of your iso from Windows, but if that mthod doesnt work there are plenty of others, whether by way of freeware or or command line.

I have so far split my new HDD into two equal partitions and formatted the first one to NTFS for Linux. Haven't tried formatting the second partition to exFAT yet for Mac. Not sure how to do it yet, suggestions welcome. For some reason I don't see an option to partition the HDD to exFAT in Disk Management or if I right click and select 'format'. The option is there my USB but not for my spinny HDD.

Again Im not an expert but I dont think Mac uses exFAT, just that it has the ability to read it. I think the OS itself uses HFS or HFS+.Post #3 in this thread seeems to agree, but again I am not a Mac user so am prepared to be wrong. They also seem to think that FAT32 is the best bet for working between Mac and Windows but http://osxdaily.com/2013/10/02/enable-ntfs-write-support-mac-os-x/ has some info about Mac and its ability to read NTFS.... Good luck

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Thanks knoober, points noted.

I think for Linux at least, there's an option to format the HDD during the install process, but I'm not sure.

Bit of an update, I tried to create a bootable USB for High Sierra, so far no good. Same result as with Ubuntu. I created a USB drive, booted from it and the same result... stuck at "Verifying DMI Pool Data" and the underscore is just blinking away. Hmm.

My latest problem I'm trying to solve is trying to get my USB device to show up in Windows now that it has been formatted as a bootable USB for Mac OS. For some reason it doesn't show up in Windows anymore. It's detected in BIOS just not in Windows. My USB hub on my monitor has stopped working, wonder if this is at all related. Hating USB at the moment to be honest.

EDIT: I think diskpart seems to recognise it. Wierd.

EDIT2: Well now the disk is recognised but I'm unable to format it in disk part or from file explorer.

EDIT3: Well, that's fixed now, follow instructions here: http://ccm.net/forum/affich-5078-windows-unable-to-complete-disk-drive-format

EDIT4: We have lift off with Ubuntu, loaded into the installer, so now confident that it will all work. For me win32diskimager did the trick. Rufus failed to create an image that would boot, win32diskimager worked straight away.

EDIT5: Just going through the process of installing Ubuntu.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

I've use dd operations via terminal to create a bootable USB, does a clean job. Works for your Linux USB, can use dd for creating your MacOS USB as well.

Unetbootin has like a frontend, is dependable for creating bootable USBs as well.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Well I managed to get Linux installed so one down one to go.

ihrsetrdr, looks like Unetbootin is for installing Linux only. I'll have a look at the dd operations method for installing Mac OS as I haven't managed to find a way that works. Unibeast doesn't work for me and another method that I found didn't work either. So Mac is proving to be a real pain in the backside to get working. Especially now that you can't d/l older versions to High Sierra and HS also comes only as a 17-19mb or so installer.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

From what I see, Apple has made the acquisition of their OS software more complex; h-tosh's of the past only needed an Apple OS X dvd.

What if you used the MacOS Sierra.DMG, then converted it to an .iso for burning to dvd, then later doing an upgrade to High Sierra?

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

I think what you are suggesting will work if you install it on a Mac, however with a Hackintosh, even if you install Sierra or any older MacOS, you will need to go through the process of creating a bootable USB/device and install it that way from there which basically means doing what I'm trying to do already i.e. create a bootable USB of HS. It's a painful process thus far. I have tried a few different methods and all have been fruitless. Creating a bootable USB specifically for a hackintosh is a real challenge. On the plus side, I've gotten a bit more acquainted with unix systems.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

Sorry I can't be of more help, my last h-tosh was probably close to 8 years ago. I have made USB installers, but it was for previous versions of OS X going onto a Mac, not a hackintosh.

Spoiler

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Bit of an update. Still battling away with this - namely trying to get a working MacOS happening, it's fighting me at each step of the way. My Linux broke so will have to re-install that but other than that, I think tripe boot will work. At the very least, I think the way it works in my case, since I'm installing each OS on a separate partition, you can install loaders on each one i.e. on the MacOS partition, install clover and then when you're in BIOS simply boot from a specific HDD and off you go. At this stage, not sure if it's possible to install just one boot loader to rule them all. I think if I need to switch between them quickly and I grow tired of doing it the long way, I think I'll look into this some more, but for now I'll leave it at that. That's the plan, hopefully I have taken everything into consideration. Now to get MacOS installed.

 

[caddi daddi]

I have windows , ubuntu and autodesk all in one rig.
all I did was install each to it's own ssd with all other drives disconnected, pull up the boot menu during boot and pick an os from there, easy peasy.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Yep, that's the plan now.

 

[habbajabba]

Definitely. Linux/aka mac, partitions to begin with. Dual is one thing but triple is going past the limits of drives partitioning abilities (unless it's all windows) which is why separate drives are your friend. Depends on your case use, I can't remember the exact numbers, depends on the initial formatting scheme, ntfs, ext4, etc.
Something like this:

On a disk using the traditional MBR format, the partition table has four slots. Each can hold a "primary" partition, or one can be used to create an "extended" partition which can contain any number of sub-partitions (often called "logical drives"). Extended partitions are basically a workaround for the small size of the MBR partition table, and there are limitations on what they can be used for. (For example, the Windows bootloader must be on a primary partition.)

The newer GPT disk format supports many more partitions — technically unlimited, I think, but operating systems impose a limit of 128. These are all "primary" partitions (to use the MBR terminology).

Essentailly the bootlaoder and the OS define what is then capable. Many many parts will neither boot nor properly hold an os.
Unless the OS, or you know what you're doing, partitions the drive, I would not recommend partitions simply because if the controller fails for any reason, you lose it all. Separate drives equals less wear and tear for the average user and is also easier to backup or recover, easier to install to to begin with. I imagine that if each drive was bootable, windows would automatically ask which one when you turn it on. Not sure though.
I kinda want to go either persistent usb, virtual machine, or best, dual mobo's (or more) in one box, which all start with one button.

 

[4macsoft]

It's not recommenced to use 3 OS in one machine, 2 is still too much.