4TB - Linux Mint - Win 7 dual boot?

Mortymoose

Mortymoose

Honorary Master
Joined
May 26, 2013
Messages
13,616
Reaction score
11,760
Location
In the Namibian desert...
I know that W7 has a 2TB limitation.

I have a w7 installation disc,
I have a Linux Mint 10 installation disc,
I have an oldish motherboard that supports 4 SATA drives,
I have a brand new 4TB drive.

Can I do a dual boot using this 4Tb,

Do any of you wise folk have a link that you can toss in me general direction that will show me step 4 step ?

I thank thee!

:confused:
 
I don't know much about windows 7 and its 2TB limitation but its not a problem for Linux. Even the old ext4 can support up to 1 exbibyte file system. Just install windows 7 put in on a 2tb partition then install Mint and put it on another partition. Grub will handle dual booting.

I assume the old motherboard doesn't support uefi but it should work with the older bios firmware as well.
 
mxc said:
I don't know much about windows 7 and its 2TB limitation but its not a problem for Linux. Even the old ext4 can support up to 1 exbibyte file system. Just install windows 7 put in on a 2tb partition then install Mint and put it on another partition. Grub will handle dual booting.

I assume the old motherboard doesn't support uefi but it should work with the older bios firmware as well.
Click to expand...

So in essence, I should install the 4TB, let windows install fresh creating it's MAX 2TB on the drive...

Once installed, pop in me Mint CD, boot off the DVD drive and let Mint set the grub for dual using the remain 2TB....
 
http://lifehacker.com/5403100/dual-boot-windows-7-and-ubuntu-in-perfect-harmony

Here's what I would do,
Start up the mint cd/usb, created a 2GB (or half of the disk) ext4 partition at the end of the disk leaving the front 2GB unallocated.
Restart with the win7 dvd and install it as you would normally into the unallocated space at the beginning of the drive.
Next boot the mint cd/dvd and delete the ext4 partition at the end of the drive, now install mint into that unallocate space.
You might have to create an extended partition for mint as I think win7 creates 3(?) partitions all on it's own & you are only allowed 4 primary partitions on a drive.
 
Mortymoose said:
But won't my motherboard have to support UEFI?
MB is a G31TM-P21
Click to expand...

Nope, no UEFI support. UEFI you'll only find on more recent MBs.

You could always just use the 2nd partition for a data partition.
 
ponder said:
Nope, no UEFI support. UEFI you'll only find on more recent MBs.

You could always just use the 2nd partition for a data partition.
Click to expand...

Explain in more detail to the more ignorant, are you saying I could split the disc into 2 x 1.99gb partitons as NTFS and then load W7 fresh on the 1st and the 2nd partition would appear under W7 as "another" drive?
 
Mortymoose said:
Explain in more detail to the more ignorant, are you saying I could split the disc into 2 x 1.99gb partitons as NTFS and then load W7 fresh on the 1st and the 2nd partition would appear under W7 as "another" drive?
Click to expand...

That is correct, see if it sees it as another partition or D: drive, if not install mint.
 
milomak said:
GPT definitely does not require UEFI
Click to expand...

So you are saying you can boot win7 off a 4gb gpt partition without uefi?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-za/kb/2581408

In order for an operating system to fully support storage devices that have capacities that exceed 2 terabytes (2 TB, or 2 trillion bytes), the device must be initialized by using the GUID partition table (GPT) partitioning scheme. This scheme supports addressing of the full range of storage capacity. If the user intends to start the computer from one of these large disks, the system’s base firmware interface must use the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and not BIOS.
Click to expand...

The user in this case being Mortymoose wanting to use the full 4GB and boot his OS from it as requested in this thread.
 
Last edited:
In the end....

I mirrored my current 250gb W7 drive onto the 4tb drive using Clonezilla, i then booted into W7 , and created a new partition of the remaining 2tb that w7 recognised..... W7 obviously failed to see the other 2tb of the drive....
Nevertheless, I booted Mint of the dvd and installed it onto a 900gb ext2 And left the balance for mucking around with...
Then edited the grub to make W7 the 1st choice and now I am exactly where I needed to be...

Thanks for all the input.....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X