how to partition drive for windows osx dual boot

Partition Drive For Windows Osx Dual Boot Windows 8.1 Alongside Windows

Hes written about technology for nearly a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years.

Having two operating systems installed and choosing between them at boot time is known as dual-booting.

When you boot your computer, the BIOS loads the boot loader from the hard drive and the boot loader boots the installed operating system.

You could put a second hard drive into your computer and install an operating system to it, choosing which hard drive to boot in your BIOS or boot menu.

You could also boot an operating system like a live Linux system or a Windows To Go USB drive from external storage media.

By p artitioning the drive into several different partitions, you can have one partition for one operating system and another partition for another operating system, splitting the drive between them.

In reality, many operating systems use multiple partitions.

The point is youre devoting part of the drive to one operating system and part of the drive to another.).

Grub loads instead of the Windows boot loader at boot time if Windows was already installed, allowing you to choose the operating system you want to boot.

Windows also has its own boot loader, which can be used to select between different versions of Windows if you have more than one installed.

Having more than one operating system installed allows you to quickly switch between two and have the best tool for the job.

It also makes it easier to dabble and experiment with different operating systems.

Partition Drive For Windows Osx Dual Boot Windows 8.1 Alongside Windows

If you like Windows 7 but want to try out Windows 8.1, you could install Windows 8.1 alongside Windows 7 and choose between the two at boot time, knowing youll always be able to go back to Windows 7.

You dont have to deal with the overhead of a virtual machine, which is especially bad when it comes to 3D graphics.

The downside is you can only use one of your installed operating systems at a time.

This is inconvenient and youll probably have two operating systems installed on the same drive, so thats where a boot manager comes in.

If you have multiple operating systems installed, you should see a menu when you start your computer.

This menu is typically set up when you install an additional operating system on your computer, so you wont see if you just have Windows installed or just have Linux installed.

Create Linux installation media, boot into the Linux installer, and select the option to install Linux alongside Windows.

Boot into the other Windows installer and select the partition you created.

Choose to install the new Linux system alongside your old Linux system.

Resize your old Linux partitions in the installer and create new ones to make space if the installer wont do this autoamtically.

Follow our guide to installing Linux on a Mac for more details.

If you wanted to, you could have three or more operating systems installed on your computer you could have Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all on the same computer.

Youre only restricted by the storage space available on your computer and the time you want to spend setting this up.

How To Partition Drive For Windows Osx Dual Boot