Third Party Boot Managers

[tray262]

Hello,

I was asked to do some research on different boot managers. My question is what is the point of a third party boot managers Pros and Cons, compared to the MBR that is part of Windows OS.

Thank you in advance

 

[markwp]

You are asking two different things. A boot manager provides options on which device (hd, ssd, usb, cd) you wish to boot from.

The MBR (master boot record) is the first sector of a computer hard drive or other mass storage device and tells the computer how to load the operating system, how the hard drive is partitioned, and how the file systems are organized.

What are you trying to accomplish?

Mark

 

[tray262]

Well we will be adding 3 OS's on our HD's, partitioned. We are looking into different Boot managers to select which OS the students will boot to.

So far I've see that certain 3rd party software's allow booting into an OS and making the other partitions invisible, but I'm looking for more information regarding any other differences between 3rd party boot managers and the "default" I guess, that comes with Windows

 

[markwp]

Grub will be the best for what you need.

Grub (GRand Unified Boot loader) will work with virtually any os and is highly configurable. It can be used with a GUI or command line, it can be user customized and it supports chain booting for systems that will not multi boot.

See THIS wiki for more info.

I have used grub for quite a while to multi-boot windows 7/xp/linux/linux mint/ubuntu/debian/android, etc.

Mark

 

[tray262]

So in your opinion what is the biggest reason to use a third party boot manager?

 

[markwp]

Flexibility to choose the os you want by simply scrolling through a list and pressing enter. No need to invoke bios or look at various drives. Everything you need in one scrolling screen.