Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2020 06:50:25 +0100 From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What is the "better / best " method to multi-boot different OSes natively WITHOUT VirtualBox(es) ? Message-ID: <20201025065025.6a13dc89@archlinux> In-Reply-To: <20201024111010.5c867e8540a369b826d26703@sohara.org> References: <CALMiprbGBaSJQUAA=1HDZAjvsVNK7dqB_5mBb5DKzV16F3hxHg@mail.gmail.com> <20201024111010.5c867e8540a369b826d26703@sohara.org>
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On Sat, 24 Oct 2020 11:10:10 +0100, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote: >bot swap drive bay On another mailing list a woman does use a selection switch thingy. I don't remember what it is called. The drives are on-board, but only a selected drive is connected and turned on. A hot swap drive bay inherits the risk of a damage by static electricity when changing drives. I also want to add for consideration, if reboots between operating systems are often wanted and HDDs are used, it's way better when all drives, even the unused drives are spinning all the time. Parking and releasing heads very often, does shorten the life span the most. If sharing data between operating systems is wanted, it requires organizational measures. Sometimes it's maybe wasting resources to use a separated drive. Btw. I once used GRUB (legacy or 2, I don't remember) to multi-boot between FreeBSD, Windows (98 and/or XP, I don't remember) and several Linux installs, on a BIOS machine (definitively no EFI secure whatsoever thingy). FreeBSD and Windows via chain loading. I never experienced an issue. Installing the operating systems was easy, too. Nowadays I'm using syslinux to boot between several Linux installs, FreeBSD is on an USB stick and apart from this I'm using iPads and Windows XP, 7 and 10 are running on a VirtualBox Linux host, which is a super advantage, if restoring a broken Windows is required ot to share data. In my experiences there never was an issue that one install messed up the other install or at least the boot loader. The real issue (when using different operating systems on one machine, as I've done in the past or the way I'm doing it at the moment, by using an USB stick and tablets) is, sharing data between operating systems. An example I'm experiencing at the moment. To share data between Linux and iPadOS I could use (ex)fat or hfs+. When storing the Linux data on (ex)fat partitions, permissions get lost, so (ex)fat is no option at all. Actually I'm using hfs+, so Linux can store permissions, but after the drive was used by iPadOS, under Linux I need to run fsck.hfsplus to gain write access, even if fsck.hfsplus just mentions, that everything is ok (and journaling is disabled), it seemingly repairs something without mentioning it. Without running fsck.hfsplus file system access is read only or results in an input/outout error. The new drive seems not to be broken. Maybe something is fishy with my USB 3 ports, OTOH I rarely experience USB issues, so I guess even the input/output errors are related to a file system inconsistency and not to a hardware related issue.
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