[CentOS] installing WIndows at end of disk

Wed May 3 15:50:27 UTC 2006
Tony Schreiner <schreian at bc.edu>

On May 3, 2006, at 11:34 AM, Jim Perrin wrote:

> On 5/3/06, Tony Schreiner <schreian at bc.edu> wrote:
>> I have a functional CentOS system on which I need to install Windows
>> for dual boot. I can make some space available on a high partition.
>> Can WIndows be installed on partition 8 (starting with 1)? I have
>> always done it on the first partition.
>
> Windows will do angry things to the boot sector of the drive if it is
> installed last during dual boot setup, so you'll have to use the
> recovery disk if you do this. Whether windows will be happy at the end
> of the disk is somewhat hardware dependent. I honestly don't know if
> that would work.  You might instead (if you have the ram) use vmware
> and load windows in linux to sidestep the problem entirely.
>
>

Thanks for that. I do know I will have to repair the grub boot record.

I'm not sure that VMWare will work for me. The reason I need to  
install Windows is that I need to run the Dell Storage Manager to do  
some things to a (oldish) Dell disk array connected via fibre  
channel. Linux can mount these disks just fine, but there appears to  
be no way to manage the array from Linux. So I don't know if Windows  
in VMWare  on top of Linux could do it. It might, I just don't know.

It's a long story, the array was set up before me on a Windows  
system, which is no longer here. My other option is to move the FC  
card to another machine. At this point I haven't decided which is the  
easiest way to go.

Tony Schreiner