What happens to MBR after OSX install beside Vista?

[beagle72]

Hi,

New owner of a T60 wide -- awesome upgrade from a T21!

T60 shipped with Vista pre-installed. I have already set it up and would like to keep it as is. Of course, the Rescue & Recovery partition is also installed.

Ultimately, I would like to multiboot and add OSX and Ubuntu to this T60. I am relatively experienced with multibooting on other PC's.

I have already shrunk the Vista partition and created the following partition layout:

P1 (primary): Rescue & Recovery (installed)
P2 (primary): Vista (installed)
P3 (primary): OSX (planned)
P4 (extended):
Ubuntu root (planned)
Ubuntu swap (planned)
Shared Data (planned, NTFS or FAT32)

Notes: I believe Ubuntu will install into an extended partition, but if not, I'll go with a fourth primary for it. Not a big deal.

I assume that the factory-shipped MBR provides the ThinkVantage functionality.

When I install Ubuntu, I will NOT install the MBR to the first drive, but instead to the install partition. This should prevent the factory MBR from being overwritten.

But when I install OSX ... what? Will it automatically overwrite the master MBR with the Darwin bootloader? Is there a way to prevent this? For example, booting into a rescue CD and hiding the first partition, and setting the OSX partition to boot. Would this cause OSX to install the MBR to its own partition?

Alternatively, suppose OSX insists on overwriting MBR. In that case, it seems like my best bet is to backup the factory MBR first. I can do this by booting into a rescue CD and saving the factory MBR to a usb drive. Following OSX install, I can boot back into the rescue CD and restore the factory MBR. Sensible?

Ultimately, I would like to use EasyBCD to add the alternate OS' to the Vista bootloader. Will EasyBCD interfere with the factory MBR?

Thanks in advance for any advice that verifies where I'm right and wrong.

-beagle

[makaveli559m]

I too know the feeling, I recently upgraded from a Thinkpad A20M to a Thinkpad Z61m with Windows Vista Business preinstalled
Maybe later on I will try adding Mac OS X on it