Mutli-OS boot

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romka · #1 Post by **romka** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:22 am

hi,

i want to put another hdd into the expansion slot. i then want to put another OS onto it.

i am not very keen on boot loaders which i have to mess with.

what is the quickest way for my T60 to boot off either hard drive?

does it have any inbuilt 'easy to reach' features which allow me to boot from either drive?

thanks.

WirelessAndy · #2 Post by **WirelessAndy** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:47 am

Couldn't you just hit one of the F-keys at bootup to select a drive? Of course, this is assuming you've set the Ultrabay HD in BIOS in the boot sequence (internal HD, ultrabay HD, floppy, whatever.)

And if you could boot off the Ultrabay HD: Is there a speed penalty if running off the Ultrabay HD, assuming both drives are identical SATA units?

egibbs · #3 Post by **egibbs** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:41 am

If the other OS is on a drive in the ultrabay it is easy.

Install the 2nd HDD temporarily in place of the internal drive and load it with the OS.

Then move it to the UltraBay and reinstall your primary HDD.

Assuming you're running Linux edit the Grub startup file to load from HDA1 instead of HDA0 (because it is now loading from the 2nd HDD).

Set the internal HDD first in the boot sequence in BIOS, and you will normally boot from it. When you want to boot the second OS hit F12 at startup and select the second drive.

Not boot manager needed.

#4 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:59 pm

I just did this on my T42, installing Vista on the second hard drive, with the IBM Preload XP already on the main hard drive. I found the best method for me was to shut off the ThinkPad and remove the main hard drive, turn on the ThinkPad then install the other OS in the Ultrabay hard drive. After the OS is installed and gone through all it's reboots, shut off the ThinkPad and reinstall the main hard drive. On boot up, when you see the IBM logo, press F12 and choose which hard drive to boot from. If you do not press F12, it will automatically boot the main hard drive.

I used an external CD/DVD drive for the installation CD. If you do not have an external CD/DVD drive, then remove the main hard drive and install the second hard drive in the main slot for installing the OS.

I ended up with either drive I booted from, being drive C, and the drive not booted became drive D. So sometimes the main drive was drive C and sometimes drive D, and the same with the Ultrabay hard drive.

Note: If you have both hard drives in the laptop when you install Vista, Vista will install a boot loader (without asking) on the main hard drive, effectively disabling the service partition. It does make it handy for booting either OS, but I wanted to keep my service partition instead.

#5 Post by **archer6** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:47 am

GomJabbar wrote:I just did this on my T42, installing Vista on the second hard drive, with the IBM Preload XP already on the main hard drive. I found the best method for me was to shut off the ThinkPad and remove the main hard drive, turn on the ThinkPad then install the other OS in the Ultrabay hard drive. After the OS is installed and gone through all it's reboots, shut off the ThinkPad and reinstall the main hard drive. On boot up, when you see the IBM logo, press F12 and choose which hard drive to boot from. If you do not press F12, it will automatically boot the main hard drive.

For clarification:

You removed the main hard drive and left the main hard drive bay empty?
Installed the other hard drive in the ultra bay, and installed the 2nd OS using an external optical drive?
Did you make any changes to the bios boot sequence?

This sounds like a great solution.

vinny77 · #6 Post by **vinny77** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:49 am

I like Gag

#7 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 7:39 pm

archer6 wrote:For clarification:

You removed the main hard drive and left the main hard drive bay empty?
Installed the other hard drive in the ultra bay, and installed the 2nd OS using an external optical drive?
Did you make any changes to the bios boot sequence?

This sounds like a great solution.

Yes, yes, and no.

#8 Post by **archer6** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:03 pm

GomJabbar wrote:Yes, yes, and no.

Thanks....

kennyschiff · #9 Post by **kennyschiff** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 10:26 pm

Can someone recommend a specific hard drive for this?

Also, are we just talking the standard: ThinkPad 2nd Hard Drive Adapter for Ultrabay Slim?

#10 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:15 pm

kennyschiff wrote:Can someone recommend a specific hard drive for this?

Also, are we just talking the standard: ThinkPad 2nd Hard Drive Adapter for Ultrabay Slim?

1. It depends on your model of ThinkPad.

2. Yes, but again, it depends on your model of ThinkPad. The T60 uses a SATA adapter. The older models use a PATA adapter.

kennyschiff · #11 Post by **kennyschiff** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:38 pm

I had followed this thread from inside the T4X forum (wasn't paying attention).

I have a T43.

#12 Post by **GomJabbar** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:29 am

kennyschiff wrote:I have a T43.

You need a PATA hard drive. But the T43 is somewhat unique in that to avoid a 2010 error on boot up, you need to buy the drive from Lenovo. There are some ways to deal with the 2010 error. Search this forum to read more about it. The following Hard Drive FAQ has good information on all of this.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=24116

Here is a list of System Service Parts for the T43.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 58420.html

Here is the 2nd hard drive adapter for your T43.
ThinkPad 2nd HDD Adapter for Ultrabay Slim
If you buy it now, it just happens to be on sale from Lenovo for $33.47 (regular price $49.95).

claudeo · #13 Post by **claudeo** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:48 pm

For a different approach: Does anyone have useful pointers on installing either VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC without blowing out the service partition?

#14 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:27 pm

Either of those should have no effect on the service partition. Basically they are an application that runs another operating system in a window.

jjesusfreak01 · #15 Post by **jjesusfreak01** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:00 am

claudeo wrote:For a different approach: Does anyone have useful pointers on installing either VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC without blowing out the service partition?

To give a little more info, they create a virtual hard disc. What this is is a file on your main HDD, located in the My Docs/My Virtual Machines folder. It isnt visibly a file system even, just a file that holds the data for the entire virtual hard disc. Anyways, it makes no changes to your system like messing with the service partition or the MBR, so dont worry.

claudeo · #16 Post by **claudeo** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:36 pm

Thank you very much, carbon_unit & jjesusfreak01.
Your responses are short and to the point.

cb474 · #17 Post by **cb474** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:31 am

egibbs wrote:If the other OS is on a drive in the ultrabay it is easy.

Install the 2nd HDD temporarily in place of the internal drive and load it with the OS.

Then move it to the UltraBay and reinstall your primary HDD.

Assuming you're running Linux edit the Grub startup file to load from HDA1 instead of HDA0 (because it is now loading from the 2nd HDD).

Set the internal HDD first in the boot sequence in BIOS, and you will normally boot from it. When you want to boot the second OS hit F12 at startup and select the second drive.

Not boot manager needed.

I'm trying to do exactly this and having no luck. I loaded Ubuntu onto a second hard drive with it temporarily installed in the main hard drive bay. Then I switched my primary hdd (with Windows on it) back and put the Ubuntu drive in the ultrabay.

Finally I edited Ubuntu's Grub menu.lst file and changed instances of "root (hd0, 0)" to "root (hd1,0)".

But it's not working. I'm a total Linux newbie. Can anyone explain in more detail how to make this work? Thanks.

egibbs · #18 Post by **egibbs** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:52 am

Try (HDA,1). That's what worked for me. The ultrabay is the first device on the second IDE controller.

Ed Gibbs

cb474 · #19 Post by **cb474** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:02 pm

Hmm. That didn't work. I got "Error 23: error parsing number."

cb474 · #20 Post by **cb474** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:55 am

Okay, never mind, I said I was a total Linux newbie. I was editing the wrong line.

In the menu.lst file this line needs to be changed:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/sda1

The "sda1" needs to be changed to "hda1".

I guess it's sda, when it's in the primary hard drive page, because that's SATA, but it's hda in the ultrabay because that's PATA?

egibbs · #21 Post by **egibbs** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:53 am

Sounds right - so it's working now?

Ed Gibbs

cb474 · #22 Post by **cb474** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:16 pm

Yeah, it's working. Now all I have to do is configure a bazillion other things!

Good to know it's possible to do this without having to have an extra external usb optical drive. Personally I wish there were a way to install ubuntu without the Live CD. Download install files to primary dirve and install directly onto secondary drive from there. I tried to mount Daemon tools and run the setup from there, but that doesn't work because you have to boot from the image. Anyway, a project for another day. And I guess I can see why the Ubuntu people might not want to write installers for a Linux system that run in Windows. That does seem a little non-sensical.

Thanks for the help.

cb474 · #23 Post by **cb474** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 12:33 am

Okay, here's a couple more questions about booting XP and Ubuntu on two separate drives. I've got it working, with XP booting off the primary hard drive and Ubuntu booting off a hard drive in the Ultrabay.

1) Everytime I boot into Ubuntu, shutdown, and then boot back into XP, the clock in XP resets to five hours ahead of the actual time. What's up with that? Way to stop it from happening?

2) More complicated question. I'm concerned about battery life and noise with two hard drives running. Is there a way to make the drive in the Ultrabay spin down, when I'm not using it and booted off Windows on the primary drive? And conversely to make the primary drive sping down when I'm booted into Ubuntu off the Ultrabay drive? I'd like to do this both in battery operation and AC (because of noise concerns with the latter). Right now my solution is to just set the drives to spin down after five minutes. But is it bad to have the drive I'm working off of spinning down and up a lot, does that cause more wear? Like I said, I wish I could apply separate settings to each drive.

Thanks.

egibbs · #24 Post by **egibbs** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:10 am

To your first question - This is a real common newbie question (I had it too when I was dual-booting). There is a disconnect between Windows and Linux WRT to the real time clock. Windows assumes the RTC is set to UTC time, and Linux assumes it is set to local (or it might be the other way around). When windows or Linux shut down they reset the RTC to the correct time based on their assumption.

You can change what Linux assumes - see http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html

Setting UTC or local time
When Linux boots, one of the initialisation scripts will run the /sbin/hwclock program to copy the current hardware clock time to the system clock. hwclock will assume the hardware clock is set to local time unless it is run with the --utc switch. Rather than editing the startup script, under Red Hat Linux you should edit the /etc/sysconfig/clock file and change the ``UTC'' line to either ``UTC=true'' or ``UTC=false'' as appropriate.

For Ubuntu it might be etc/default/rcS - http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread. ... time+hours

As far as the second question - not that I am aware of. I've run two HDDs in my TP for so long I don't even think about it anymore.

Ed Gibbs

khaverblad · #25 Post by **khaverblad** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:06 am

romka wrote:hi,

i want to put another hdd into the expansion slot. i then want to put another OS onto it.

i am not very keen on boot loaders which i have to mess with.

what is the quickest way for my T60 to boot off either hard drive?

does it have any inbuilt 'easy to reach' features which allow me to boot from either drive?

thanks.

I'm just gonna stick with the original question about not using boot loaders, but imho the best and easiest workable bootable available is AirBoot that you install into the mbr from a diskette; check following link for more information:

http://airboot.netlabs.org/

egibbs · #26 Post by **egibbs** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:36 am

What I'd really love to see is virtualization added to the Rescue and Recovery environment. You would normally boot to R&R (a not-bad OS in itself for basic web surfing etc.) and then run one or more OSes as windowed VMs inside R&R if you need the functionality of a full OS.

Not likely to happen anytime soon though.

Ed Gibbs

cb474 · #27 Post by **cb474** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:27 pm

egibbs, thanks for the help on the clock problem. cb474

cb474 · #28 Post by **cb474** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:49 am

To answer part of my own question about the hard drives. It appears, at least in Windows, the Ultrabay drive does spin down independently, if it's not in use. I have yet to observe what happens in Ubuntu.

Still wondering if it's bad for the drives to spin down and back up frequently. Or conversely, saves wear on the drives by letting them spin down more?

I'm also wondering if the ThinkPad's active protection works on the hard drives when booted into Ubuntu? Also does it work on the Ultrabay drive at all (Windows or Ubuntu)?

Mutli-OS boot

Mutli-OS boot

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Re: What parts do I need?

I have a T43

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