I am planning a new system which will include a 30 GB SSD and a 1.5 TB HDD. I want to partition the 30 GB SSD so that Ubuntu is the host and Windows 7 is the guest. I have been thinking about how to do this and have come up with the following steps. Has anybody tried something similar?
1. Format the SSD using the Windows 7 installer and create a
16-GB Primary boot partition; do not install Windows 7 but
install the NTFS file system
2. Use the Ubuntu Partman utility to create two more Primary
partitions and an Extended partition (I have my reasons)
3. Ted Ts’o recommends using a Primary partition geometry of
224 heads and 56 sectors/track to guarantee that the partition
is aligned to an erase block boundary on my SSD. See http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/20/aligning-filesystems-to-an-ssds-erase-block-size/
4. The Extended partition is less intuitive.
> pvcreate –metadatasize 250k /dev/sda#
> You use pvs to check that partitions are aligned
>> pvs /dev/sdb2 -o+pe_start
>> The first PE will be at 256.00K
5. Primary partitions created by the Windows 7 installer are
guaranteed to be aligned to an erase block boundary
6. Use the Ubuntu Partman utility to format a second drive, a 1.5 TB HDD
7. Install Ubuntu
8. Install VirtualBox 2.2.4 for Linux
9. Install Windows 7 as a VirtualBox Guest specifying
"raw hard disk access" to that 16-GB Primary boot partition specified in step 1
I am trying to get the best of both worlds; ease of switching between the host Ubuntu and the guest Windows 7 operating systems as well as the speed of native installations.
Any thoughts?
--Mike Ramsey
1. Format the SSD using the Windows 7 installer and create a
16-GB Primary boot partition; do not install Windows 7 but
install the NTFS file system
2. Use the Ubuntu Partman utility to create two more Primary
partitions and an Extended partition (I have my reasons)
3. Ted Ts’o recommends using a Primary partition geometry of
224 heads and 56 sectors/track to guarantee that the partition
is aligned to an erase block boundary on my SSD. See http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/20/aligning-filesystems-to-an-ssds-erase-block-size/
4. The Extended partition is less intuitive.
> pvcreate –metadatasize 250k /dev/sda#
> You use pvs to check that partitions are aligned
>> pvs /dev/sdb2 -o+pe_start
>> The first PE will be at 256.00K
5. Primary partitions created by the Windows 7 installer are
guaranteed to be aligned to an erase block boundary
6. Use the Ubuntu Partman utility to format a second drive, a 1.5 TB HDD
7. Install Ubuntu
8. Install VirtualBox 2.2.4 for Linux
9. Install Windows 7 as a VirtualBox Guest specifying
"raw hard disk access" to that 16-GB Primary boot partition specified in step 1
I am trying to get the best of both worlds; ease of switching between the host Ubuntu and the guest Windows 7 operating systems as well as the speed of native installations.
Any thoughts?
--Mike Ramsey