Help understanding my hard drive / partitioning situation... Pictures Included! :)
- by xopenex
So I have installed windows 7, and two different distros of linux... I have read and tried to understand things like "spanned" "extended" "primary" "swap" "dev/dev2/" "GRUB" "Windows Boot Loader/Manager" etc.... I have a very very limited understanding of all of it! :)
I am trying to figure out how to get all OS boot options on one Boot manager (I'm thinking it will be GRUB), because at this point when i turn on my computer, I basically get two booting options (excluding the memtest options etc)... One options is to boot one of my Linux Distros and the second option is to boot my Windows 7. When i go with the first option, Linux boots up... when i go with the second Windows 7 option, I get the "windows boot manager screen" and I can choose Windows 7 or my other installation of Linux (Ubuntu)... In addition, I did not have swap partition from my first installation of Linux, I created it during the installation of my second distro...
This is a lot of info for me, but I'm guessing that you linux Gurus, pretty much understand what is going on!
Hope my question makes sense.. i will try and simplify...
Can i get all 3 OS's optioned to boot from one GRUB?
Can i get both Linux distros to use one swap file (I have seen this possible in other threads, but because of how my disk is partitioned, i dont know if i can do this)
I hope that i dont have to start all over installing one after the other.
Ive got some pics that may help understand my hard drive situation! Thanks guys! :)
EDIT... i had some pics, but im a new member.. so cant post them... :(
here is a description of the pics... incase i can email them or post later.
[grub][3]
First Screen I come to after turning on computer... "Ubuntu with linux 3.2.6" (highlighted) fires up Linux perfectly... other choice at bottom of list "Windows 7 (loader) (on dev/sda1)... brings me to the next picture below.. windows boot manager
[win boot mngr][6]
both options here load the os selected
[Disk Manager Windows][1]
picture of my hard drive situation through windows disk manager utility
[gparted][2]
picture of my hard drive situation through "gparted"
[mycomp][4]
picture of my hard drive situation through "my computer"
[paragon][5]
one last pic of my hard drive situation through the eyes of "paragon"