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Hardware - Support => Hard Drives and SSDs => Topic started by: m654321 on July 11, 2015, 04:38:16 AM

Title: Can I have GPT & MBR on the same laptop but on different physical drives?
Post by: m654321 on July 11, 2015, 04:38:16 AM

I have an older laptop (c.2007) with two separate physical drives (both formatted as MBR): sda contains my OSes (LL/Win7 dual-boot); sdb contains  /mnt/DATA for file-sharing between the OSes.

However, I would like to partition sda as a GPT partitioned drive.  Of course I will no longer be able to run Windows OS on it (except as a virtual machine), but the purpose is to use sda to showcase a number of different distros to interested parties. 

Question...
If I have my OSes on GPT-formatted sda, will I still be able to symlink with files on the MBR-formatted sdb, or will symlinking only work if both drives are GPT-only, or both drives are MBR-only, rather than a 'mixed' system?

Many thanks for any help on this one.
Regards
Mike   

Title: Re: Can I have GPT & MBR on the same laptop but on different physical drives?
Post by: N4RPS on July 12, 2015, 07:08:57 PM

Hello!

I run both Windows 8.1 and LL on a GPT-formatted drive. You need to use UEFI secure boot. You can install LL in UEFI, but it is more difficult.

I could be wrong, but AFAIK, you can only boot MBR or GPT, not both at the same time, as you will have to switch back and forth between Legacy Boot (MBR) and Secure Boot (GPT) in the BIOS.

I found a tutorial that explains it all in more detail, including which Windows OSes support UEFI/GPT:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html)

Hope this helps...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

Title: Re: Can I have GPT & MBR on the same laptop but on different physical drives?
Post by: m654321 on July 15, 2015, 01:31:20 AM

I think my question was misunderstood - apologies if it wasn't clear.

The purpose was not to have a dual-boot Win/LL system on the old (c.2007) laptop; I have this already, with UEFI enabled, on a more modern laptop.

What I wanted to know was if  a multiple-distro booted GPT drive could access shared files on an MBR drive on the same laptop; UEFI doesn't apply here as the laptop is 8 years old.

Kind regards
Mike

Title: Re: Can I have GPT & MBR on the same laptop but on different physical drives?
Post by: N4RPS on July 16, 2015, 01:37:16 AM

Hello!

At the risk of being mistaken, if your laptop has two hard drives, - one MBR, one GPT - you shouldn't have any problems that I know of accessing files on either drive. There should definitely be no issues at all, if one of the drives is an external USB or flash drive...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob