Since Linux operating system is getting more popular, I would like to make my i7 920 MSI X58 Platinum system to have triple boot : Windows 7, Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and Ubuntu 11.04. This video shows my triple boot system.
I’ll write up in full details when I have time, but the procedure is as follow:
1. Install Windows 7, use easybcd 1.72 or 2.02 to create dual boot menu for Mac OS X (MBR not EFI) – Shrink a partition for MacOSX –
2. Install retail snow leopard 10.6.3 to an external USB hard drive – upgrade to 10.6.7 – use Multibeast 3.4 – restore to the internal hard drive after everything is done – fix dual boot windows/macosx
3. Install Ubuntu 11.04 (download and burn to a CD then boot from it) – Shrink a partition from Windows 7 for Linux-Ubuntu 11.04- select installation from other (Not sidebyside) – create partition 300Mb for “/boot” in shrunk partition – create partition 20Gb (20000) for “/” in shrunk partition – create partition 2Gb for “swap” in shrunk partition – create the rest for “/home” in shrunk partition – Select boot device to device “/boot” – then install.
4. When done installing Ubuntu – in easybcd1.72 or 2.02 create new menu using “grub (legacy)” and device = partition4 (300mb)
Triple Boot: Windows 7, Snow Leopard 106.7, Ubuntu 11.04 Linux
2TB hard drive-MSI x58 Platinum Motherboard-i7-920-OC-3.61GHz-Nvidia 8400GS-Snow Leopard 10.6.3 Retail DVD-iBoot CD-Multibeast 3.4-Easybcd1.72-2.02-USB Keyboard-Mouse-10.6.7 Update Combo–Ubuntu 11.04 ISO CD.
I got a 2TB SATA hard drive for $80.00 and install fresh 3 operating systems as an experiment.
Install Windows 7 first
Select “Custom (Advanced)” although it’s default to upgrade and follow instruction to install windows 7 to 2TB hard drive.
Now install easybcd 1.72 or 2.02 to Windows 7 operating system. From easybcd2.02 we create menu and write to MBR – windows 7 (default) and mac os (MBR), change the boot time for menu – default is 30sec.
Install Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail DVD and update with 10.6.7 to USB external Hard drive, this one can be used for all supported PC system. When we’re done with the USB external hard drive installation, we will restore it to the Mac OSX partition we’ve just created onto the 2TB internal hard drive. This USB external hard drive is a 250Gb 2.5″ laptop drive, partitioned GUID with 30Gb (mac osx) and 200Gb (FAT) for data. I’ve been using this one for all external USB mac os x on dual boot tutorials. The name of the Mac OSX partition is “usb30gb” and “data”.
Hopefully by this time, we should have an iboot cd made and update 10.6.7 combo downloaded and multibeast 3.4 put onto a usb device, the best is on the “data” partition on the USB external drive that we’re using.
Put the iboot cd into the DVD drive, reboot the system, make sure ahci is selected in the bios, if your windows 7 already installed without AHCI, you need to fix the windows AHCI before changing from “IDE” to “AHCI” in the bios. Hit F11 while booting to get boot menu, select to boot from CD/DVD and hit enter. Iboot cd will load with a menu will many icons, eject the iboot cd then replace with the retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD, close the DVD and wait until the DVD stops spinning then hit “F5” key on the keyboard. The iboot menu will display “Mac OS X Installation DVD”, click “tab” key then use the arrow keys to high-lite the “Mac OS X Installation DVD”, at the prompt, type -v and hit “enter”. This will install the Snow Leopard.
Hit F11 while booting to get boot menu, select to boot from CD/DVD and hit enter.
Remove iboot from DVD tray, insert Snow Leopard DVD, wait and hit F5
After tons of dialogs we should see the setup screen if nothing goes wrong.
Don’t install yet, we need to go to disk utilities to prepare partition for USB external hd. We should see our USB external hard drive. So we already have 2 partitions, GUID format, if your usb external hard drive is blank, then you need to partition it using option GUID. 1 partition called usb30gb (30gb for mac osx) and 1 with 200gb Fat data.
Erase the usb30gb osx partition to mac os journaled, when done, close disk utilities, back to installation screen and start select options to install
After about 20-25 minutes, it should be done, but we’re not… We need to remove the Installation DVD and put back the iboot cd, start the process all over again, reboot–>F11–>select cd/dvd boot device–>remove Installation DVD–>put iboot cd–>OK
using arrow keys to select usb30gb hard drive to boot, but put -v before hitting the enter key, we will get the kernel panic because we did not turn off the PC while booting from usb external hard drive. If you don’t want to see this kernel panic, then press the power key to turn off the PC after the Mac installation and not reboot.
Turn off the PC, start the process again, turn on–>F11–>select cd/dvd boot device–>iboot screen–>tab key–>select usb30gb–>type -v–> enter and this time the welcom video should come up with sound. Just go through them quickly, I close them all except the account name and password for the computer.
Now we can get in Snow Leopard 10.6.3, we can install multibeast 3.4 and use this version of software, but we want to update everything up to 10.6.7
Now we can install the downloaded 10.6.7 update combo then install multibeast 3.4 so we can actually boot from our external usb30gb hard drive without using iboot any more.
Shrink Partition For Snow Leopard
After we got the USB external hard drive working as we wanted, now we have 2 ways of installing the Snow Leopard 10.6.7 to our internal hard drive partition: Restore the usb partition to internal partition or using patched MBR OS X Installation DVD to install. The fastest way is to restore the USB hard drive to the internal hard drive.
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