Question. Multi Boot

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2010, Jorge Biquez wrote:

> Hello all.
> I hope this question does not sound so stupid. I have read archives and do 
> gogled searches but would like , if possible, to hear comments based on 
> experience.
>
> I have a machine, pentium D 2.4mhz 2gb RAM, 160DD HD XP Pro. As I mentuioned 
> in other post I installed FreeBSD 7.3 under a virtual machine using vmware. 
> It works fine but seems it is too much for the machine since when I am 
> running it the machine is very slow. I have that FB installation running 
> without graphical interface since that's why I need then.

I've tried VMWare player with FreeBSD 7, albeit on a faster machine. 
Text mode was fine, never tried xorg.  A P4 should be adequate, but 
there may be other things going on in the background like Windows 
antivirus scanning.

VirtualBox seems to work very well on Windows, and it's certainly worth 
a try before reorganizing your disk for multibooting.

> Now I would like to have a graphical interface running to learn to use 
> eclipse and continue with my PHP/Mysql development learning. I know that if I 
> continue under VMware the windows machine will be even more slow so I decided 
> that I would have this machine running with a multi boot schema and choose 
> when to boot under FreeBSd, Windows and later with Linux (looking for a job 
> and in some companies asked me to have the basics of any distribution). The 
> most important is that I need to be able to continue having that actual 
> windows partition without loosing anything or changing anything.
>
> What do you think, based on experince, is the safest way to accomplish this?

Safest would be still be the VM; little chance of damaging the host disk 
data when the VM has no direct access to it.

For multiboot: back up entire Windows hard drive including a separate dd 
copy of the MBR, resize Windows partition to make room using partition 
software of your choice, test to make sure Windows still works.  Back up 
again.

Install FreeBSD, creating new partition/slice, leaving room for a Linux 
partition, and installing the FreeBSD boot manager.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA