[kelvinlym]

Hi, I've built a HTPC with 1.5TB and Zotac Ion ITX F board.

I want to partition the drive to allow dual booting of Win7 and XBMC live.

This is my plan.

Partition 1: XBMC Live 20GB
Partition 2: Win7 64 100GB
Partition 3: For files (movies, music etc) rest of the HDD

Question:

1. I plan to use GParted to partition the drive before installing anything because I think Win7 will screw it up. So how do I prepare the drive? What format for the partition 1? Part 2 and 3 is NTFS that's sure.

2. Will XBMC Live be able to see Part 3?

3. How do I make a GUI and boot to allow me to choose which Partition to boot to, without going into BIOS every time?

Your help and tips are very much appreciated.

[harryzimm]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Heres what i'd do.

Install windows 7 first. Make sure when you install windows you create a partition that is 100gb.

Once you have installed windows, boot xbmc-live, choose install. When it asks you where to install xbmc go to advanced (i think) and create a 20 gb ext3 partition with / mount point.

Then create a smaller 2gb partition for swap space. And finally create a ntfs partition with the remaining space. The xbmc live installer will see your windows partition and configure grub boot loader so you can choose which os to boot at startup.

You might need a few test runs to get it right but its pretty staight forward when you do it a few times.

Btw there is an extra step to allow for xbmc to see your ntfs partition. Here is the link

cheers.

[kelvinlym]

Thanks for the info and the warm welcome.

I was actually looking around for info and there were concerns that Win7 might screw up the partitions.

Anyway, I'll give it a try tomorrow.

I just built my HTPC and bought Win7 Home Premium, only to find that I don't have a DVD drive to boot it. D'oh!

I have to run out tomorrow to borrow or buy a USB stick.

I'll post my success or failure tomorrow.

Cheers.

[harryzimm]

No problem,

You will be fine, as long as you install windows first. If you were to install xbmc first then windows you would lose the ability to boot into xbmc.

Hope it all goes to plan. Just in case, here is a good guide to install windows from a usb drive.

cheers

[odinb]

I would do it slightly different, but everyone has their own twists right?
Trying to follow what you wanted in terms of OS and space.

Fire up gparted from a live boot disk: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Create the following partitions:
A 100GB partition for Win7 formatted to NTFS.
A 6GB partition for / formatted to ext4.
A 2GB partition for swap formatting not needed.
A 12GB partition for /home formatted to ext4.
(This will be the 20GB you wanted for Linux/XBMC.)
A partition with whatever is leftover formatted to NTFS.

Then install Windows in the 100GB partition first, and then install Linux/XBMC on the 6GB partition using the corresponding /home and swap already created. If you point to them during the linux installer, they will later be automatically mounted.

To be able to write to the NTFS partition from linux, you need to install ntfsprogs (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs).

[kelvinlym]

Thanks odinb.

My first thought was your way, but I didn't know what format to partition the Linux partition with. Your info is very helpful.

Quick question though, what do the / partition, and /home partition is for? Do I need that much actually?

I don't think I need to write to NTFS in XBMC live as I guess the media metadata and images etc are saved in /home I think? But good to know anyway.

Cheers.

[odinb]

The / partition is your root system where everything but your personal config files are stored.

The /home is where your personal config files and personal files are stored. This is also where your XBMC skins, fancast plugins etc. are stored.

The / should not be smaller than 4GB if you ask me, a minimal install on my Asrock 330 with XBMC takes up just over 2.5GB, and you want to be able to update, add other apps, and still have space for logfiles and corefiles etc. With a 1.5TB disk, I would keep it at 6GB.

For the /home, I guess it depends on how many skins, fancast plugins, metadata etc you plan on adding.
Again, with a 1.5TB disk, why not just keep it at the 12GB? It is not like you will be missing space, at least not to begin with. Worst case, you can shrink it later with gparted without reinstalling if you find out you are not using the space, and could need it on the large NTFS partition.

NTFS write support can always be installed when you need it, if you do not do it from the get-go.

[NotShorty]

Install windows to hard drive, install xbmc live to usb drive, set bios to boot to usb first.

usb plugged in = boot to xbmc
usb unplugged = boot to windows

NS

[kelvinlym]

The odinb way doesn't work sadly. GParted Live booted up fine, but it somehow couldn't detect my HDD.

I using WD caviar green 1.5TB HDD at Primary SATA as master.

BIOS sees it just fine though.

So any Linux masters here?

[vikjon0]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The odinb way doesn't work sadly. GParted Live booted up fine, but it somehow couldn't detect my HDD.

It is not clear to me if you have mounted the disk or not. If not it will not be seen. Either you mount in fstab (recommended) or you remove nodiskmount from the boot as per the link in prev post.

BTW, you dont need to install anything to read/write ntfs. That was, I guess, a long time ago or in another dist.

[kelvinlym]

I got a grub-install /dev/sda failed error while trying to install grub loader.

I think that should be the MBR for windows 7.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: Now I'm getting a missing operating system error. I'll try to repair the MBR of windows 7 now.

[momoski]

Got the same error here. Very annoying. I did all kinds of options except full disk usage as I also have Windows 7 installed and dont want to lose that.

[linuxluemmel]

Some BIOS can protect the MBR to be killed or changed by a virus.