Dual boot win7 and openSUSE 12.2 on separate hard drives

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have a single hard drive with win7 and openSUSE 12.2 booting of the MBR - basically I followed the excellent directions from http://www.tweakhound.com/linux/suse/113/hdualboot/1.html

Now I installed a second hard drive and the idea is to run openSUSE from it. Preferably I would like to add it to the MBR, move my /home directory from the old drive over to the new one and finally remove the drive from the MBR as well. Is this a sensible strategy and if so what is the best way to carry it out?

Thanks!

2

What bootloader do you use currently?

3

I use the windows boot manager

Windows Boot Manager

identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {3a54c8c8-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
resumeobject {3a54c8c7-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
displayorder {3a54c8c8-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
{3a54c8cc-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 15
displaybootmenu Yes

Windows Boot Loader

identifier {3a54c8c8-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
recoverysequence {3a54c8c9-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {3a54c8c7-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
nx OptIn

Real-mode Boot Sector

identifier {3a54c8cc-660f-11e0-a177-abe4f4e98489}
device partition=C:
path \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr
description openSUSE 12.2

4

I do not know anything about the windows boot loader so I can not help with that but I have done this before and it was pretty straight forward for me.

I installed with DVD to the new drive creating the exact same user and then boot with the old openSUSE and copy the /home/xxxxx from the old install (now booted) into the new one overwriting any files.

I have also done this in the reverse order without problems, make the default partitions (/, /home, swap) ahead of time on the new drive and copy over the /home partition from the current install. Then install from DVD and make sure you do not format the /home and specify the same user as was on the old system.

Couple things to watch out for, the install DVD puts the grub2 bootloader on the MBR of the first drive and will wipe out the MS bootloader, so you need to change that if you do not want this to happen or take the appropriate measures for your bios/hardware. I would actually just use grub2 to boot windows and openSUSE it has worked for me here.

After you have things working good just wipe out the partitions on the original drive and re-format.

5

I’d perform a clean install, get rid of the windows bootloader and have GRUB2 manage booting. Then, from the console, copy the content of the old homedir(s) to the new /home, run

chown USERNAME /home/USERNAME -R

to make sure UUID’s are OK.

6

First, you can install ALL of openSUSE to any External Hard Drive and get it to boot from that drive if you can select the USB hard drive as your boot device in your PC BIOS setup. Please note that we are not talking about using GPT formatted disks or using the ability of a UEFI based PC for hard disks larger than 2.2 TB in size. I have a write up on my suggestions for partitioning a hard drive for use with openSUSE:

https://forums.opensuse.org/content/111-partitioning-hard-disk-during-install.html

As for backing up your /home, for a complete byte for byte backup, you can use the dd command. But, the Source and Target partitions must be identical in size and type for a successful clone. Doing a by file copy is safer, but may miss some of your import settings. Consider if you do a complete install to an external hard drive, you can mount your old /home and copy anything from it you like. I would get my external hard drive working with openSUSE before I did another thing. I would suggest you download, make and test a LiveCD with KDE or GNOME as well, just in case you need it.

Lastly, if you have a Windows 8 boot disk, you can boot from that disk, go to the rescue console and type in the following command to fix the MBR:

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

Be aware that not only does the MBR need to be reloaded with boot code, but the Windows 7 system boot partition must be marked active for boot. A GParted Boot disk can provide some added abilities to help make a Windows 7 disk bootable again. Windows 7 and Windows 8 both like to create small boot partitions of less than 500 MB in size, which then loads Windows from the larger Partition that gets identified later as Drive C:. Getting Windows 7 booting again is a separate issue from loading openSUSE onto an External Hard drive and using the USB drive as your Boot drive. No matter if Windows boots on its own or not (assuming you did not corrupt your Windows 7 install trying to fix it, openSUSE can start launch just as it could before, even from an external hard drive install of openSUSE.

Thank You,

7

On 2013-01-24 13:06, plesset wrote:
>
> I use the windows boot manager

That’s a problem, few people here use it at all. I have no idea what the
printout you post next means.

A note: Please use code tags for printouts and commands. Advanced
editor, ‘#’ button.
Posting in
Code Tags - A Guide

A note: you say: “Preferably I would like to add it to the MBR”. I do
not understand that, you can not add anything to the MBR. Certainly not
the ability to choose what you boot. The MBR is just a very small
program smaller than 400 bytes long that simply loads a bigger code from
a fixed place in the same disk. It is that secondary code which may be
able to put a menu and let you choose what to boot.

If you want to use the Windows boot manager I suppose you need to
install the free utility “EasyBCD” to manage it. I hope it is able to
boot whatever is on a secondary disk. If not, you will have to ask those
people.

I would then install openSUSE in the second disk, telling yast to
install grub to that disk (beware: Yast will want to install it on the
first disk even if openSUSE is installed to the second disk). Thus the
Windows bootloader would simply boot grub in the second disk, and this
grub would in turn boot openSUSE.

I’m assuming grub2 works in this situation, I don’t know.,

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

8

I’ll try to remember this in the future …

A note: Please use code tags for printouts and commands. Advanced
editor, ‘#’ button.

9

On 01/25/2013 08:16 AM, plesset wrote:
>
> I’ll try to remember this in the future …
>
>>
>> A note: Please use code tags for printouts and commands. Advanced
>> editor, ‘#’ button.
>>

While you are remembering, stop top posting.

A. It puts things in an unnatural order.
Q. Why is top posting bad?

10

Just to finish this, I finally got it to work but not exactly as I has visioned it.

  1. To begin with, I could never properly install 12.2 on the new drive (/sdb). The installer would run without any complaints or warnings, but never boot it (even with placing it at the top of the boot order list in bios). I was careful to place grub2 on to sdb1 ("/") and not sda.
  2. The old setup (win7 & openSUSE 12.2) would still boot from sda as before. Remember that sda was I disk from my old desktop which I had placed in the new one.
  3. openSUSE wouldn’t recognize the ethernet controller (Atheros Communications Inc. AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10))
  4. After compiling it by hand (basically I followed this networking - How do I install drivers for the Atheros AR8161 Ethernet controller? - Ask Ubuntu), it worked.
  5. Finally I deleted all partitions (from the failed install process) on sdb, reformatted as ext4, and mounted as /home2. After rsync-ing with /home I flipped the mount points
> df -h                                                                                        
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on                                                      
rootfs           20G  7.3G   12G  39% /                                                               
devtmpfs        7.9G  4.0K  7.9G   1% /dev                                                            
tmpfs           7.9G  4.0K  7.9G   1% /dev/shm                                                        
tmpfs           7.9G  700K  7.9G   1% /run                                                            
**/dev/sda6        20G  7.3G   12G  39% /   **                                                            
tmpfs           7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup                                                  
tmpfs           7.9G  700K  7.9G   1% /var/lock                                                       
tmpfs           7.9G  700K  7.9G   1% /var/run                                                        
tmpfs           7.9G     0  7.9G   0% /media                                                          
**/dev/sdb1       1.8T   84G  1.7T   5% /hom****e**

Thank you all for your comments

11

On 2013-01-25 15:36, plesset wrote:
>
> Just to finish this, I finally got it to work but not exactly as I has
> visioned it.
>
>
>
> - To begin with, I could never properly install 12.2 on the new drive
> (/sdb). The installer would run without any complaints or warnings,
> but never boot it (even with placing it at the top of the boot order
> list in bios). I was careful to place grub2 on to sdb1 ("/") and not
> sda.

Grub should also be on MBR of sdb.

> - The old setup (win7 & openSUSE 12.2) would still boot from sda as
> before. Remember that sda was I disk from my old desktop which I had
> placed in the new one.
> - openSUSE wouldn’t recognize the ethernet controller (Atheros
> Communications Inc. AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10))

If you can not install openSUSE, I do not understand this part.
Nevertheless, the question should go on another thread, I think.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

12

You must have something in the disk MBR even if generic boot code and if so then you need to mark the root partition as bootable. In this case I think I’d put the Grub MBR there.

13

Hi plesset,

I suspect that the external hard disk is not recognised as bootable. I had much the same problem. Please check if the external hdd is recognised as bootable by “Set up” and can be included in the booting order.

PrakashC

14

I have the same predicament, but only reversed. I didn’t want to create a similar redundant post, so I pitch in here.

I have successfully cloned Windows from my internal SSD drive onto an external disk drive (connected with USB). Both come up under grub2 and both boot up. However when I booted Windows on the external drive without grub2, it ended with a BSOD (which I was unable to read fast enough).

Disconnecting the external drive and trying to boot the second Windows option fails. Expected since it cannot find the drive. I then concluded that this boot option in grub2 really is the Windows on the external drive.

I have run the Windows Recovery DVD and executed both bootsect and bootrec on both drives. This enabled the Windows partition on /dev/sda1 to boot instead of grub2. Windows boot loader offered me two Windows options. I expect these where both the internal and the external Windows. The first one boots perfectly as it should. The second one boots up half way and ends in a BSOD.

So going back to grub2. Disabled the boot option on partition /dev/sda1 and grub2 would work again. Booting up both Windows options from grub2 works. The external drive does not get any BSOD booting from grub2.

So I am sitting with a cloned windows drive that works, but not completely. I also want it to work without grub2. I want to be 100% sure that the clone is a viable Windows drive before I delete Windows from the internal drive.

So any suggestions? Would be nice to be able to boot Windows without grub2, but since the computer will be running linux anyway and the external Windows drive is only “allowed” to be used with this computer it does not really matter if I boot it from grub2.

Still as I stated, since it does not work to boot alone, I am left with a nagging feeling that it is not a viable Windows drive.

I know this problem is 50% linux and 50% Windows (perhaps), and concerning booting Windows without linux/grub2, but who else knows better about this sort of problem with Windows than linux users.

When I have deleted Windows from the internal drive I plan to move the linux partitions to where windows where. Reinstallation is for succers :).

15

IIRC installation on USB drive is not supported until Windows 8.

16

IIRC installation??? What is that acronym for? IIRC - What does IIRC stand for? The Free Dictionary

I’m running with Windows 7. I’m not installing anything, it is a just moving Windows from one drive to another. Since I have done it successfully before, cloning Windows from one smaller SSD to a larger SSD. Now that I have installed OpenSuse I have cloned Windows out on a different external drive. I wanted openSUSE to run alone on the internal drive and if/when I had a need to use Windows I could just boot up the external drive. And booting it up I wanted to be able to do it with and without grub2.

17

On 2013-02-21 09:46, arvidjaar wrote:
>
> DJViking;2528959 Wrote:
>>
>> I have successfully cloned Windows from my internal SSD drive onto an
>> external disk drive (connected with USB).
>
> IIRC installation on USB drive is not supported until Windows 8.

I recently cloned my Windows 7 disk, internal to external via usb, then
exchanged the disks so that it wold boot from the new disk, and Windows
refused, blue screen. It refused to boot because the hardware had
changed and it thought it was an illegal copy (though the wording was
not that clear).

I solved it by making sure the “Disk identifier:” as seen by fdisk is
the same as the value on the old, broken disk.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

18

If I Recollect Correctly. I never have seen other usage at least in technical Internet communication.

I’m running with Windows 7. I’m not installing anything

I’s not about installation process itself. There are timing issues with USB drivers so booting from (or better having system drive on) USB is not supported. It may work, or may not work.

19

It must be something different trying to boot Windows from an external drive connected with USB. As I said in my previous post, I have before cloned Windows from one SSD disk to another SSD disk. However the old disk was switched out from my laptop and replaced with the new disk. Windows booted fine on the new internal disk, even though it booted from a different hard drive than before.

When Grub2 list up both my Windows drives it seems to boot both up without problem (the internal and the external).