Triple Boot issue

[jacob0808]

I am trying to add a third HDD to my computer. My current set up has two hard drives, 750 Gb Sata with Win7 and WinXP dual boot, and a 150 Gb IDE drive with Ubuntu 11.04. In this environment my computer boots into the windows drive's boot menu with an option for the ubuntu OS. I have a third hard disk (160 Gb Sata with Fedora 15) I am trying to add for use on homework for a UNIX class I'm taking.

I used EasyBCD to add Ubuntu to my bootmgr originally. However, when trying to add another option for fedora it adds the option in the boot menu, but when I select this option it takes me to my Ubuntu drive.

I have tried unplugging the hdd with ubuntu and adding the "Linux OS" option in EasyBCD but it still maps to the drive containing ubuntu. I am at a loss on how to get a working boot menu with all 4 of my installed OS. I would prefer the windows bootmgr over GRUB2, but at this point I just want it to work.

Please advise me in any way possible, thanks.

 

[bmouring]

Hmm, it seems you are not alone in having difficulty with EasyBCD and multiple disks (after a quick google), so I'm not sure that it can easily be handled in that program/utility.

I do know that grub(2) can handle that fairly easily, but it doesn't have a GUI to do things (which usually turns off Windows and Mac users). grub (not 2) consists of a file that describes the disks and how to boot them, and there is ample documentation out there that covers this. grub2 in theory should be easier since most distros that use it provide a mechanism that automatically detects (and adds) all OSs to the boot options, however if for some reason they aren't detected, it can be a real pain to get them into the boot menu.

Let us know how you want to proceed (and if you need assistance)

 

[Ijack]

I've had this problem and the only answer that I found is to use Grub as the primary boot menu. A further complication is that some Linux distros automatically update the Grub menu when a new kernel is installed. I ended up with a Grub menu that loads Mandriva and LFS directly, chains to the Windows boot loader for Windows 7, and chains to separate Grub installations for Fredora and Solaris Express. This multi-level boot is the only way that I can get OSs booting correctly from multiple hard disks.

EasyBCD is fine for simpler installations but seems unable to cope with more complex situations.

 

[jacob0808]

If I boot directly into either distro of Linux Grub comes up but with no options other than the rescue mode and normal of that drives OS.

If grub is my only option, how do I go about achieving a complete boot menu in either grub menu?

 

[bmouring]

How to do it in GRUB1, for GRUB2, you might want to use the GRUB customizer