I’ve decided to go for a multi boot system.
Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Arch (manjaro. Version undecided).
What would be the ideal size Hd to install? I’ve got a 250Gb and a 500Gb Hd, I’m thinking the 500Gb one as I’m thinking of installing everything (as in the ‘.lib’ file) that can be for each distro!
How would I go about starting? Obviously from scratch with the Hd set as the first one to boot, then…
which drive is up to you 
I'm thinking of installing everything (as in the '.lib' file) that can be for each distro!
Not sure what you mean by that ?
How would I go about starting? Obviously from scratch with the Hd set as the first one to boot, then.....
Again, not 100% sure what you’re asking … personally I’d settle on a partitioning scheme and create the partitions prior to installation … or at least I’d create one primary partition (for one distro) and create an empty extended partition containing the rest of the drive, so the installers for the second and third OS’s are forced to create logical partitions within the extended one.
Other people would partition differently … and if you ever plan on installing Windows as well, so would I 
I can’t think of how to explain it so I’ll post a quote from you…
From thread ‘I Want to know more about Dolphin’
[quote author=Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec) link=topic=11114.msg87428#msg87428 date=1378079511]How would I go about starting? Obviously from scratch with the Hd set as the first one to boot, then…
Again, not 100% sure what you're asking .. personally I'd settle on a partitioning scheme and create the partitions prior to installation .. or at least I'd create one primary partition (for one distro) and create an empty extended partition containing the rest of the drive, so the installers for the second and third OS's are forced to create logical partitions within the extended one.Other people would partition differently … and if you ever plan on installing Windows as well, so would I
I mean partitioning the drive, equally for each distro. I don’t want to install Window$ as it’s already on a laptop we have.
As I’ve covered before, a HDD can only have 4 “primary” partitions, but one (or more) can be an “extended” partition … an extended partition can contain any number of “logical” partitions … unlike the Windows bootloader GRUB isn’t fussy about stage 2 of its bootloader being in logical partitions.
So for the 3 Linux OS’s you’re going to require a minimum of 4 partitions (3x / and at least one swap partition), so if you used all primaries, there’s be NO scope for adding further OS’s in the future.
I’d bung the OS whos bootloder you’re going to use in a primary partition … then create a large extended partition for everything else to go in.
So lets say you’re using the 250GB drive and want a 4GB swap partition that’ll be shared by all Linux OS’s …
3x82=246
So you’ll want roughly an 80GB primary partition for one OS
In the remainder of the drive create an extended partition using all available space.
inside the extended partition create your 4GB (logical) swap partition
then divide the remaining space inside the extended partition in half for two more logical partitions (for the other OS’s)
Does that make sense ?
Not really but I’ve had a look at my existing boot drive and see that there’s a 2.9Gb partition at the end of the drive.
I can’t quite figure how you’re working out the numbers?
I am thinking of using the 500Gb Hd.
So, the 4Gb you say to allocate would be double at 8Gb and then divide by 3 or 4 the remaining space for the other Os’s I want to install.
No need to double the size of the swap file … 4GB should be plenty unless you have a TON of RAM and plan on using hibernate.
So yeh, 500 - 4 = 496.3
496 / 3 = 165
but remember, a formatted 500GB drive won’t have 500GB available (more like 470 - 480) … so make the first primary partition about 160GB
in the rest of the space create a single large extended partition.
inside the extended partition create a 4GB logical partition for swap
and 2 more logical partitions that split the remaining space (in the extended partition) in half
That way you’ll end up with 3 x roughly 160GB partitions for the OS’s, and a 4GB swap partition
Strange you say that, I’ve recently upgraded my RAM to 8Gb and the system says I have 7.8Gb useable.
Quite confusing but I’ll try and figure it out…
I am trying to unmount the 500Gb Hd but for some reason it wont unmount.
I’ve tried using GParted and Disk Utility but neither of them will unmount the drive?
[EDIT]
There’s nothing using the drive either.
Are you certain it is the right drive?
So what happens if you close all file manager windows, and disk utility … open a terminal and run:
sudo umount -f /dev/sdc1
then reopen disk utility … is it unmounted ?
Yep, that worked
Now how do I use Disk Utility to create the partitions or is GParted easier to do it?
How do I do it as to me it’s complicated and I can’t figure it out.
Gparted may be eaiser.
Is this any good?
http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/9254/l2gc.png
How do I get it to show the little key symbol and how do I get rid of the little bit at the front of each one where it’s a yellowy colour?
Dunno … that may work with GPT as I gather you can have more than 4 primary partitions with GPT
I think you’ve mixed messages with http://linuxforums.org.uk/index.php?topic=11115.new#new
Sorry for butting in. My engineer chap said you can have two hard drives inside your computer (desk top) with different OSs and boot into either. I don’t know how practical that is.
If it’s a desktop, you can usually have more than 2 HDD’s (only limited by the SATA/IDE sockets on the motherboard, and even then you can get an add-in card to give you more) … and each HDD can have more than 1 OS on it at a time.
You can have a single HDD with multiple OS’s on it.
How do I get the key symbol to appear next to the HD in GParted?
Mount the partition … the key symbol just means it’s “in use” so Gparted isn’t able to run operations on it.
See here:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html
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