Hard Drive Werks: MBR & Ghosting

[jameslee]

Some basic questions about how hard drives work:

I've got a notebook with a 12 GB hard drive. It's got one parition on which Windows XP is installed. I'm planning on repartitioning the hard drive for an installation of Red Hat.

From my understanding, the system will then use Red Hat's boot manager to determine whether the system should boot into Windows or Linux, and the boot manager will replace the current master boot record (MBR).

My only concern is that i often Ghost the Windows XP partition from my notebook to my father's identical notebook. Will Red Hat's modification to the hard drive's MBR have any affect on the Windows XP partition? (e.g. After i install Red Hat, if i only Ghost the Windows XP partition to my father's notebook, will my father's notebook prompt to boot into a Red Hat installation which doesn't exist on his system?)

Basically, does Ghosting a partition take any part of the MBR? (I'm not even sure this makes sense, but i guess that's why i'm asking. : )

James

[Ladogaboy]

I thought that Norton Ghost only does a self-extracting back-up. It shouldn't be read like an OS, right?

[jameslee]

I have no idea what you're referring to. Is 'it' a reference to the MBR, partition, Ghost Image, etc?

[jase71]

I don't think Ghost should take the MBR with it. Otherwise, when you ghosted anything, you'd have to restore it to a hard drive with exactly the same parameters as the one the image was pulled off of. That would greatly reduce the effectiveness of Ghost. It would also make migrating your OS to a new hard drive next to impossible, and that's always been one of the big uses for Ghost.

I don't know for sure, because I haven't done it, but I think you would be ok as far as the MBR goes.

The bigger question might be how Lilo (the boot manager for Linux) works. Does Lilo write any files to the primary partition? Or does Lilo run solely from the MBR? I honestly don't remember, but it would be something to check on.

[Ladogaboy]

Originally posted by jameslee
I have no idea what you're referring to. Is 'it' a reference to the MBR, partition, Ghost Image, etc?

It being the Norton Ghost Image.

Anyway, listen to jase71. That is all that I was saying. When something is backed up with Norton Ghost, it should lose all of its normal attributes and just become part of the Ghost backup.

[jameslee]

Resource: http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011.asp

Here's the current result from my research:

1. When imaging partitions, the MBR isn't included because it's outside of the partition (i.e. it's before the first partition on the hard drive).

2. When imaging entire drives, the MBR is included because the entire drive is cloned (MBR, partitions, and all).

More importantly, i've read from the above source that when dual booting a Windows NT/2000/XP installation on a NTFS partition, you shouldn't allow the Linux boot manager to replace the MBR, but instead write to boot manager directly to the boot sector of the Linux partition.

The only concern that remains is to make sure that the Windows XP partition is in no way affected by the Linux installation, boot managers, etc. Anyone out there have any confirmation of this?

[jase71]

Originally posted by jameslee


Here's the current result from my research:

1. When imaging partitions, the MBR isn't included because it's outside of the partition (i.e. it's before the first partition on the hard drive).

2. When imaging entire drives, the MBR is included because the entire drive is cloned (MBR, partitions, and all).

That makes sense. I suppose it would have to include the MBR if multiple partitions are included.

But since you really only need the image of the XP parition, this part should be ok.



More importantly, i've read from the above source that when dual booting a Windows NT/2000/XP installation on a NTFS partition, you shouldn't allow the Linux boot manager to replace the MBR, but instead write to boot manager directly to the boot sector of the Linux partition.

The only concern that remains is to make sure that the Windows XP partition is in no way affected by the Linux installation, boot managers, etc. Anyone out there have any confirmation of this?

If you have Linux write the boot manager to the Linux partition, that should leave your XP parition completely clean.

The downside to this, as I understand it, is that you'll need to boot from a Linux floppy then to boot the Linux parition. Because if Linux doesn't write to the MBR, and doesn't write to the XP parition, the pc will just boot to XP with no awareness that there's a Linux partition on the machine.

If you don't mind starting the Linux boot process from a floppy, then I think you should be set, and your XP parition would remain completely clean.

[jameslee]

In hind sight, the second option (imaging entire drives) probably doesn't take the MBR either.

The destination drive could be either larger or smaller than the source drive, so a copy of the MBR from the source drive might not apply to the destination drive. Considering Ghost allows you to resize the partitions for both scenarios, now i'm thinking that Ghost builds/modifies the MBR manually when imaging.

As for the Linux boot disk, it's one option. According to the resource given above the MBR is left untouched, but you modify the Windows XP boot.ini file to make XP aware of the Linux boot manager. Then Windows XP will prompt you which operating system to boot into, thus resolving the need for a Linux boot disk to boot Linux. (You'll still need it to set everything up, but not afterwards.)

This is obviously a change to the Windows XP partition, but appears easy to undo.

Anyone reading this thread want to recommend Linux Mandrake over Red Hat or vice-versa? Or any comment regarding Red Hat 7.1 versus Red Hat 7.2 would be appreciated. One source i read said Red Hat 7.1 but fine, but 7.2 had issues.

Finally, a recommendation for an office suite would also be appreciated as well. Does Microsoft Office function okay on Linux, or should i move to StarOffice or beyond?

[jase71]

Originally posted by jameslee As for the Linux boot disk, it's one option. According to the resource given above the MBR is left untouched, but you modify the Windows XP boot.ini file to make XP aware of the Linux boot manager. Then Windows XP will prompt you which operating system to boot into, thus resolving the need for a Linux boot disk to boot Linux. (You'll still need it to set everything up, but not afterwards.)[/B]

Now that would be cool. I was not aware that you could do that...
I didn't think you could with earlier Microsoft OSs... is this something new in XP? Or something I've just completely overlooked for the last few years?



Anyone reading this thread want to recommend Linux Mandrake over Red Hat or vice-versa? Or any comment regarding Red Hat 7.1 versus Red Hat 7.2 would be appreciated. One source i read said Red Hat 7.1 but fine, but 7.2 had issues.

Red Hat is nice because it's what everything is designed to work with.

However, Mandrake is probably easier to install.

I've had great luck with Suse. I liked it even better than Mandrake.



Finally, a recommendation for an office suite would also be appreciated as well. Does Microsoft Office function okay on Linux, or should i move to StarOffice or beyond?[/i]

Microsoft Office will not function at all on Linux. Unless you find a way to get it running through WINE, or decide to run it on a Windows install through VMware. But essentially, Office is out of the mix for Linux.

StarOffice is good, but a resource hog. But it's a good place to start, and should do anything you need.

The one to keep an eye on is KOffice. It looks like it could be very good. I haven't used it recently, but it was coming along really nicely the last time I looked. You can find a link to it on www.kde.org

[jameslee]

Apparently you only have to do that little trick if your primary boot partition is NTFS (i.e. with Windows NT/2000/XP). With FAT(32) partitions, dual booting Linux and Windows 9x/ME is 'easy speasy'.

Most of the dual-booting (non-floppy) guides are written for Windows NT/2000, but apply to Windows XP as well. So this ability has been around for some time (again, according to the above resource).

Thanks for the make and version advice.

Has anyone tried a 'partitionless' Linux installation and therefore able to comment on the speed penalty?