[vox-tech] dual-boot machine / vmware / SATA drives...

[Alex Mandel]

Dylan Beaudette wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> recently purchased a new machine for the lab, and have plan on using it for 
> the following : 
> 
> 
> two SATA drives, one with WinXP the other with Debian Linux. 
> 
> Right now it boots into Linux by default, and will provide remote-login 
> services among other things to our lab members. The Windows XP install was 
> going to be accessed via VMware, with linux as the host operating system of 
> course, for people who actually sit down at the machine. I was planning on 
> accessing the first SATA disk in raw mode as opposed to creating a virtual 
> disk for windows to live in. however, according to the vmware docs, raw 
> access mode will not work with SCSI disks. with kernel 2.6 SATA devices 
> appears as SCSI devices- so it seems that this approach will not work.
> 
> one possible work-around would be to dump windows on the first disk, format 
> with ext3, and create a large VMware virtual disk in its place. This option 
> should work fine.
> 
> one small problem (?) -- my bootloader (grub) is stored in the MBR of the 
> first SATA disk, will re-partitioning this disk destroy the MBR ? and if so, 
> how can i safely restore it ? 
> 
> any comments / thoughts -- I am pretty sure that the above is reasonable, but 
> I would sure appreciate any other options!
> 
> thanks!
> 
> 
You should be able to repartition without effecting the bootloader. If 
you want you can back it up first with the dd command copy the first 512 
  from sda1 to a file on sda2. If it fries which I don't think will 
happen then a live disk or a grub floppy(cd or usb) to let you back to a 
command line you can pop the MBR back onto sda1.

Alex