I am going to make some changes to my triple boot machine. I am going to describe what I have the best way I know how, so please bare with me.
The changes that I want to make would be to replace windows 7 with openSuse 13.2, and delete 12.3
My only concern would be to grub. At the end of the day will I be able to log back into 13.1.
I don’t like messing with things when they are not broke.
You did not say what boot method MBR/EFI???
In generl it should not be a problem but the detaile will be different for each boot method
The term MBR sounds correct. I have never heard the term EFI.
oops I guess this is older hardware+5 years???
most all since then has shipped with an EFI BIOS. It is very important to know if you are running a traditional BIOS or an UEFI (BIOS) It is like knowing if you drive a Ford or a Chevy It makes a difference when you work on it.
those are 3 separate hard drives, does the hdd with 13.1 have grub in it’s mbr (not that important)
how are you planning to boot or better said what is your 1st hdd and where are you planning to put the grub from 13.2?
the grub installer should detect all OS’s on local disks but you may need to mount those partitions.
I am more confused today than I was 2 days ago. I’m going to back up 10 feet and re-think this.
I know how to do brand new, brand new. But right now I’m trying something different. That’s why I ask the questions.
Be sure to backup all disks with clonezilla (you’ll need the live cd and a big usb drive) or similar. If it doesn’t turn out as expected, just recover your disks so that the computer is exactly like it was before, and report back for further suggestions. You might also end up wanting your Windows 7 repair disk if you have to reinstall that partition, so find that first.
It’s not that confusing but you made several points that you didn’t explain completely.
Are those 3 separate hard drives or a single hdd with a exotic partition layout, if they are separate what hdd is disk #1 this info is needed because of the way pc’s boot, how are you booting 12.3 and 13.1?
You want to use the disk/partition that houses win7 to install 13.2 and remove 12.3, why? why not just upgrade 12.3 to 13.2 and if you use the inplace upgrade you won’t have to reformat and reinstall.
In principle the install should be transparent and the installer usually detects all operating systems on local disks, if by any chance it doesn’t (I’ve never did a 3 disk setup) you can always add them latter with yast.
They are three separate drives and I listed them accordingly.
I have considered installing 13.2 on my second drive. That may be the route that I choose.
But that still leaves a perfectly good drive that I never use anymore because of win7.
Format/repartition it and use it for general storage.
You just said the magic word. That is the “brand new” for me.
Not likely. I’m very modest, have never even gone skinny dipping.lol!
Yeah, just back it all up first.
When that is done, nothing too difficult to do what you want.
It does not even matter where GRUB is installed with the current installation. As long as you have the install DVD on hand, if you run into a problem at the time you do the install, you can give us the information we will then ask for and we can give precise directions to either modify or to manually install Grub to match the way you will have it set up.
It is not very scary, at all.
Ahh, just got to this part, and
is exactly the same thing I would do.