1 Topic by w_barnes

  • w_barnes
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Topic: Booting GParted Live CD from Windows/NTFS HD

Hi, I've seen the tutorial that describes how to boot the GParted Live CD from a hard disk running Linux and would like to know if there is a way to do the same thing on a Windows machine.

My CD drive is old and funky and I no longer trust it to burn CD's properly so if there is a way to do some kind of dual boot off the hard disk that would be great. If not, how about a Linux boot disk on a floppy disk that can load the ISO from the HD?

TIA

2 Reply by w_barnes

  • w_barnes
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Re: Booting GParted Live CD from Windows/NTFS HD

I decided to take the plunge and attempt burning a CD on my ancient CD drive anyway.... and it worked! big_smile

It booted up ok with no errors but for my peace of mind, is there a way to do an integrity check when booting the Live CD?

Thanks!

3 Reply by cmdr

  • cmdr
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Re: Booting GParted Live CD from Windows/NTFS HD

Hello w_barnes,

Hi, I've seen the tutorial that describes how to boot the GParted Live CD from a hard disk running Linux and would like to know if there is a way to do the same thing on a Windows machine.

Oh yes, there is a way to run GParted from a Windows based harddisk. But be aware, that you can't do any partitioning operations to the booting harddisk. So it makes only sense, if there is more than one internal harddisk ( and they are NOT joined in a RAID compound !). I prefer bootable USB flash drives / sticks / pendrives. Since the ISO image of GParted LIve is also a HDD image (isohybrid style), you can just copy it sector by sector to the stick and get a working GParted Live USB stick (you loose all other content, however).

For a HDD installation you need a Linux bootmanager. Syslinux or Grub would do. I prefer Grub4DOS, because you do NOT need to overwrite Windows Boot sectors (MBR/PBR). You just rename NTLDR (-> XPLDR) / Bootmgr (-> vistaldr or win7ldr) and use GRLDR ( renamed as NTLDR or Bootmgr) and an appropriate menu.lst file, which also offers menu items for the Windows startup. You may easily revert this configuration without any difficulties.

It booted up ok with no errors but for my peace of mind, is there a way to do an integrity check when booting the Live CD?

There is a md5 / sha1 sum hash for nearly every ISO image download. In theory, it should be possible to also check your burned CD this way, provided, that there are no zeroed parts appended. You may load your CD's content to a hex editor, write exactly the amount of bytes (from the beginning), the original ISO image had, to a file and check its md5 sum or compare both files (with windiff).

Kind Regards
cmdr