Multi independant boots

Karst · 16 Jun 2011

I would like to make three independant bootups, mind the red numbers in above picture.
First one: startup from volume 1 with C: assigned and volume 4 with D: assigned. Volume 2 & 3 invisable.
Second one: startup from volume 2 with C: assigned and volume 4 with D: assigned. Volume 1 & 3 invisable.
Third one: startup from volume 3 with C: assiged and volume 4 with D: assigned. Volume 1 & 2 invisable.

With the windows boot manager I can change the active volume but all volumes will be visable and keep the drive letters as in above picture.

For your information: volume 2 is a direct copy of volume 1, made after volume 1 was completely installed. This means that some of the installed programs expect to be on drive C:. After the copy to volume 2 and startup from volume 2 these program still want to work with drive C:, which would than interfere with the installs on volume C:.
VM is no option since some of the programs use very low level access to IO.
Volume 3 is reserved for a Linux install.

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?

whs · 16 Jun 2011

That would work easily if you had different physical disks, but with different partitions that may be difficult. What exactly are you trying to achieve. maybe there is an easier way.

theog · 16 Jun 2011

If you wont full independant of Multi boots, three HD would be need.

SIW2 · 16 Jun 2011

Hi Karst,

You can do it manually, but I can't be bothered with the detailed explanation.

Get a Paragon product with boot corrector in it.

The free Rescue Kit Free Edition | PARAGON Software Group - free partition software, hard disk partitioning will do the job.

Boot it up, select Normal Mode >Boot Corrector. Select your copied partition ( the second one, F in your screenie ) and change the registry volume letter to C.

That's it.

Karst · 16 Jun 2011

The Simatic Field PG M3 is a laptop with place for only one harddrive.

During bootup I would like to choose to boot from one of the sets as discribed in the first post. The Windows 7 boot manager does not bring me that. Could Grub or "Acronis OS Selector" or any other boot manager bring me that?

SIW2 · 16 Jun 2011

I never needed to hide any drives - can't you just boot into Partition 1, then remove drive letters for the partitions you don't want to see?

Then boot into partition 2 and remove drive letters for any partitions you don't want to see from that "set", etc.

My previous post which you seem to have ignored will fix the second issue you mentioned.

fafhrd · 16 Jun 2011

Linux does not use drive letters - volume 3 will always be invisible to Windows if a linux filesystem is installed (and no utility to read a linux filesystem is installed on Windows). All NTFS partitions will be available to Linux - you can choose to password protect them to prevent unwanted automatic or accidental mounting of those volumes.

Windows 7 (and Vista) will always want to boot from drive C: - it will be a different partition depending on the installation drive that each system boots from. If the root drives for 1 and 2 are given different ownership, they should also be password protected to prevent unwanted access. You should be able to hide drive 2 from a system booted on drive 1 by removing it's drive letter in windows disk management, and the same technique for hiding drive 1 from a booted drive 2.

The difficulty comes in preventing the boot managers (for Windows d1 and d2, and grub for Linux d3) from taking over when installing, or repairing the systems, which may be needed from time to time.

You will need to have an alternative bootable device for emergencies - either CD or USB. If you install Grub to a removable USB, you can then chainload to either of the windows bootloaders d1 or d2, or use Grub to load the linux on d3. If you rely on installing Grub to the MBR on the hard disk, it will sometimes go wrong, especially if Windows has a boot problem and tries to repair the bootloader, kindly overwriting the MBR.

Karst · 16 Jun 2011

SIW2 said:

I never needed to hide any drives - can't you just boot into Partition 1, then remove drive letters for the partitions you don't want to see?

Then boot into partition 2 and remove drive letters for any partitions you don't want to see from that "set", etc.

My previous post which you seem to have ignored will fix the second issue you mentioned.

Hi SIW2,

Removing the drive letter doesn't hide the drive. Beside all changes made in Disk Management apply globally. So booting from partition 1 and removing F: will also remove the drive letter in the boot from partition 2.
If no other solution pops up I will try the Paragon product.
Thanks sofar.

SIW2 · 16 Jun 2011

If no other solution pops up I will try the Paragon product.

There is no other solution - the only way to get your copied partition working properly is to change it's own drive letter.

You could have done that 100 times already in the time since I posted it.

On the other question - it seems you want to hide the drives not just from explorer - but from Disk Management as well ?

I don't know how to do that.