02-20-2012, 01:48 AM

Hey everybody, first post. So ive been scouring the internet for two days trying to figure this out, and ive finally broken down and made an account so i can ask myself.

Ive got an early 2008 macbook. I removed the superdrive because its noisy, heavy, and i never used it. I replaced it with a HDD caddy that has a PATA to SATA converter built in. So inside this caddy, i currently have a blank 500GB HDD.

In the regular SATA bay, is a 640GB HDD, with the latest and fully updated Snow Leopard installed. Ive already got reFit installed on here.

Ive got an external disk drive, and original install disks for Windows 7, SL, and Ubuntu.

What i want to do is to install Windows 7 (and eventually also Ubuntu) on the 500GB secondary HDD. I know that the PATA to SATA is gonna be slow. Dont care.

Heres where i need help: I cant figure out how to install windows on the second hard drive. ive used refit to attempt to boot from the install disk. ive tried to use boot camp from within os x. install disk with reFit fails from some error, and bootcamp doesnt even show the option to install on the second HDD.

I guess my last option would be to triple boot on the first HDD and to split the second HDD into three storage spaces, but that completely sucks.

I know that its possible to triple boot on a single disk. Can dual or triple boot be done on multiple hard drives?

TLR I need a guide for dual booting Windows 7, SnowLeopard on two seperate HDD's on my early 2008 macbook.

02-20-2012, 02:45 AM

You should be able to install Windows 7 manually on the 500 GB drive without using Boot Camp or rEFIt. You do have to be careful though...

First, make a bootable backup of your OS X hard drive (640 GB). Use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. You will need a large external hard drive to do it though.

After making the bootable backup and verifying that it boots OK, use your Windows 7 DVD to boot the MacBook. That should start the Windows 7 installation. Just make sure you direct the installation and formatting to the 500 GB drive not your main drive. Install Windows 7 on the 500 GB drive.

Once you do that, proceed with installing the rEFIt boot loader. I would forgo installing Ubuntu for now since that's a lot harder to get setup correctly. The problem is trying to control where the GRUB boot loader installs.

02-20-2012, 02:53 AM

i really appreciate the reply, thanks.

is there any formatting you would suggest doing for the second HDD? obviously im gonna leave room for when i want to tackle ubuntu.

ill back up os x tonight and most likely will post back tomorrow. on whether or not i have any problems installing windows using the macbook.

02-20-2012, 07:36 PM

Leave the 500 GB unformatted. Here's why: If you pre-format it FAT-32 from OS X, Windows 7 will refuse to install. And you can't pre-format it NTFS until you start the Windows 7 installer. Linux Ubuntu requires an Ext2 or 3 format before it will install and again you can't do it from OS X. Yes, you could probably use a third party Linux formatting tool but that may get you in trouble. Better to wait later on when you decide to install Ubuntu and use their built in partitioning and formatting utility.