[...]Dual, Triple, Quad Boot a Macbook with Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP, and Windows Vista | HydTech[...]…

Machine: X61T

[b]CURRENT: [/b]

PRIMARY HDD: 100 GB 7200 rpm – Win 7 64 bit – Primary OS

SECONDARY HDD: Experimental Multi-Boot Scenarios

I want to try out Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Lion and some Linux options.
Once I get more familiar, comfy and enjoy working on them, I want to integrate into a single HDD.

[b]FUTURE: [/b]

SINGLE HDD: 750GB 7200 RPM

I want to be able to CLONE the WORKING OSes from the above mentioned HDDs INTO a single HDD.

I would definitely be going with a GPT/GUID multi partition scenario.

Also, I have access to multiple Partition Management tools: Acronis, Paragon, Easus etc. Server/ Enterprise Editions of several of them.

I also have several such tools for the Mac OSX Platform – Drive Genius, iPartition etc etc.

[b]LIMITATIONS & SCENARIOS: [/b]

I know all the above tools wont do all the things I may want to do in terms of
- Cloning certain types of Partitions
- Resizing / Moving them

e.g. I may begin to start using Mac OS X a lot more and hence want more SPACE for it and decide to increase its PARTITION SPACE..
e.g. Maybe have a SL and a Lion partition share a singular HFS DATA partition?
Stuff like that.

- Booting them.. without issues

But I know the individual tools by themselves can do several of them.

[b]WHAT I NEED: [/b]
- What I need is to ensure that I understand, how the Partitions are STORED
- How Boot Managers such as Chameleon work in Multi OS Boot Scenarios and..

- How one can force Chameleon (and/or another Multi-OS Boot Manager) to “refresh” and boot OSes, once their Partitions have been rehashed – moved, cloned etc on the MAIN INTEGRATED GPT/GUID Disk?

- How & where can I go to read and understand this stuff as I play with it on the SECONDARY HARD DISK –
- BEFORE MOVING TO THE INTEGRATED BIG DISK PROJECT.

[b]PAST EXPERIENCE: [/b]
I’ve done Partition Manipulation and Multi Boot in the good old days of Parition Magic, Norton Ghost and System Commander (Boot Manager) when I’ve run these off 3.5″ Bootable FDDs all running on shining new Pentium 1/2 processor.

The good old day of Master Boot Recrods (MBRs), Primary/Secondary HDDs, Logical/ Extended Partitions etc.

In the end it was so simple!! Thank you!

I successfully got to the 3rd operating system installed correctly.

However on following the instructions for installing Ubuntu, that seems to have messed up & now one of the operating systems has disappeared from the initial rEFIt boot menu & Ubuntu doesn’t boot up!

I’ve tried to go back to Mac osx to remove the linux Swap space, but its not letting me remove or delete it to start again.

I have spent hours on it, don’t want to start from scratch again!

I had:

Win7
Storage
Win Xp
Mac Osx
Free Space

The version of ubuntu I installed is the latest one out from their site 10.0.4
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Any help would be welcome.

Thanks.

husky2@inbox.com

Unfortunatly for me, i’m stuck with the same problem as Archie excepted that I’m using Ubuntu 10.04… And no solution found yet!
Any idea?

installed upto and including winxp. Rebooted before doing any ubuntu stuff and went into OSX. Rebooted and went into Win7 and got “error loading operating system” error.

ps. my macbook cd drive is not supported by rEFIt so i had to install off cd using C key on keyboard rather than selecting cd in boot menu.

Thanks for the tutorial – but I’m in the same boat as the previous comments. I installed to (hd0,2) and can’t boot into Linux (9.1) and I don’t even see Windows 7 (My choice instead of Vista) from rEFIt. Robert Elkow are you there? Did you find a solution? What am I doing wrong?

I thought I was wrong with a step the previous 3 times I started from scratch, but this time I made sure I followed it precisely. I did and it doesn’t work. Anybody with a better link or tutorial for a QUAD BOOT macbook, with current bootcamp drivers etc.?

Thanks for the help