[Brads2011]

I am getting a new laptop sometime within the next few days and I was planning on having 3 operating systems on it, the laptop has 2x 500GB HDD's so I was thinking of having windows 7 on the first one, and then on the second HDD creating 3 partitions (25gb, 50gb and 425gb) and putting the other two OS on the two low size partitions and using the extra for storage.

How would I go about this safely? I was hoping to set up my BIOS so that HDD 1 auto boots win 7, and when I press F12 I had the option to boot from the second HDD and choose between the other two OS's.

Is this possible? Also I was hoping I could get some advice on how I would go about doing this. I was thinking to first install win 7 on HDD one, then partition HDD 2 with the windows utilities and then installing mac and then backtrack.

If I am an idiot and this won't work, please tell me =)

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1) Remember that for Linux, you are going to need to use the Linux utilites to partition the drive, since you will need a swap partition about the size of your RAM, so that's another partition you'll need on that drive.
2) Because installing Mac OSX on non-Apple hardware is against the OSX End User License Agreement you agreed to when you legally purchased OSX, we will be unable to assist you in installing OSX on your non-Apple hardware. Here at Geeks to Go, we have a strict non-compliance policy when it comes to subverting security protocols - such as that which keeps OSX from being installed on non-apple hardware.

[The Admiral]

1) Remember that for Linux, you are going to need to use the Linux utilites to partition the drive, since you will need a swap partition about the size of your RAM, so that's another partition you'll need on that drive.
2) Because installing Mac OSX on non-Apple hardware is against the OSX End User License Agreement you agreed to when you legally purchased OSX, we will be unable to assist you in installing OSX on your non-Apple hardware. Here at Geeks to Go, we have a strict non-compliance policy when it comes to subverting security protocols - such as that which keeps OSX from being installed on non-apple hardware.

[ElliotFriend]

Hey, Brads2011! Thanks for your post: hope this helps.

It's not that difficult to install extra OSes onto one system or even one hard drive once you know what you're doing.

On both my laptop and netbook, I've currently got triple boot setup with XP + Linux Mint + BackTrack and Win7 + Linux Mint + Fedora


It seems like you've got a pretty good idea of what you want where (aside from choosing a second distro to replace OS X), it made it a little easier for me to envision by physically drawing it out on a piece of paper or something. It'll give you a pretty good idea of how it should look in the end. You may even want to make it a dual boot system. Put just one Linux distribution on the thing and you can easily boot BackTrack from a USB Drive.

You will absolutely NEED the GPartEd Live CD. It will put the Windows HDD Utility to shame. Stick that in before you even boot up. Make the whole first hard drive NTFS. Then, on your second drive Make the three partitions ext3, ext3, and NTFS; respectively. If you want your Windows installation to recognize the data partition, it'll have to be NTFS. Linux plays with other file systems much better than Windows ever has, and your other two OSes will recognize the partition fine.

Next, pop in Windows. A rule of thumb is to install Windows first, on the first hard drive, on the first logical partition. Then, you can install your other two OSes on your second hard drive. Make sure you only install the Grub Bootloader on the LAST distro you install. Grub should recognize all the other partitions when it installs. If not, it's fairly easy to tweak the bootloader to get them all on there.

Side Note: I tried the Hackintosh thing, once. It just wasn't worth the trouble it took to set it up. Give Macbuntu a try instead. It'll be much more stable and if the look and feel is what you're after, it'll definitely deliver.

[Brads2011]

Thanks so much for the replies. So I guess I am not allowed to install mac on my laptop, thanks for warning me about that, I never knew.

So just for a bit of clarification; if I was to install a few operating systems on my second HDD, would I be able to change the BIOS setting so that my first HDD (the one with windows on it) automatically loads, and then if I want to boot from the other HDD, to press F12 at the screen to select? Or was the linux geparted application the only way to triple boot?

[ElliotFriend]

I've never done it that way, but I'm sure it's a matter of your BIOS. It may be possible, maybe not.

GPartEd isn't so much the ONLY way to partition your hard drive(s). Really, if you're new to linux/partitioning/double/triple booting, it one of the most helpful applications I've ever come across. It's a graphical tool that you can use to partition the drives. It has a point/click interface with drag 'n drop simplicity. Give it a try, for sure. The bootloaders are separate from GPartEd. You can work out whatever Bootloaders you want, partitioning is just the first step and GPartEd is extremely helpful for that.