I've got very recently a PC upgraded with motherboard EVGA X58 FTW3 (CPU Intel Core i7 960 3.2 GHz; RAM 24 Gb). The primary operating system Installed on my PC is  Windows 7 64-bit. The system is working OK.

Normally, before the upgrade, I used two operating systems on same PC, the other one being Linux, and till now that was not a problem. However after I got EVGA X58 FTW3 motherboard, I cannot get Linux runningon my PC as a second operating system. First I installed Linux SUSE 12.1 64-bit on another HDD of my systems, but Linux does not boot.

I suspect that could be the driver "Marvell" which is causing problems. Right now I run 7 HDD on the EVGA motherboard: six SATA 2 and one SATA 3. Half of that disc space I allocate for Windows, and the other  half for Linux. When installing, Linux-GRUB boot loader generates a table of HDD's in a special file boot sequence. Initially, after installing GRUB can not find the root of the boot drive, and then, after installation this sequence of drives in BIOS does not match the sequence of GRUB.

I tried to install Linux several times using following combinations: i) use all seven HDDs, ii) disconnected all the HDD apart from two of them - one for Linux and one Windows. Linux sometimes loads if I leave the DVD installation disk in the optical drive. GRUB can not boot the system and gives an "error 22". I tried to load from Windows BCDedit with reference to the boot partition of Linux and vice versa - downloaded from the Linux GRUB with reference to the boot partition, Windows.

Nothing really helped!

Could it be that the reason of the problem is the driver "Marvell", which supports SATA 3? Is there any way to disable it? I would prefer to sacrifice one of my seven HDDs (the SATA 3 one), but to get the second operating system (i.e. Linux) running.

So basically the question is, how to install a second operating  system (i.e. Linux) on a EVGA motherboard with X58 chipset?

Thank you very much in advance for any help.

Is it Possibly the USB3? it is probably the Sata 3 Controller though. I know on the SR-2 (has the same controller) People had to disable both the network adapters and the sata controller to get VMWare to boot. 

Hi farthestkris.
 
My message is not about how to install an emulator vmWare workstation. I do not need an emulator, I need a live Linux on a real physical hard disk to a real file system.
 
Regards Tutankhamun.

You can dual boot the two systems.  Install Windows first then install Linux afterwards.  Linux does a pretty good job partitioning HDD's for the dual boot process.

Hi, z3r0t0l0rence

z3r0t0l0rence


You can dual boot the two systems.

 
Yes, I did so!
I tried to load from Windows BCDedit with reference to the boot partition of Linux and vice versa - downloaded from the Linux GRUB with reference to the boot partition, Windows.
It is "dual boot", z3r0t0l0rence.
 
Nothing really helped!
 
Regards Tutankhamun.

Read here:
 
http://www.linuxbsdos.com...ws-7-and-ubuntu-11-04/
 
You may or may not learn anything from the contents of this article (but it might be good to read all the details even if the general subject seems like what you've already covered... I learned a couple of things from it in a similar situation).  In any case, the author of it has helped a lot of people with dual booting Windows 7 and various flavors of Linux on the same machine in many different configurations, and I think he would be a good person to ask for help.

Does that distro use grub2 or grub legacy?  I find grub legacy much easier to work with than grub2.
 
I notice on most of my machines that selecting a drive to boot via the BIOS boot menu can produce a different drive ordering (and numbering) than what the grub installer thinks is correct.
 
Maybe list your drive layout here - what drives on what ports, and which has Linux installed?
 
It may be that editing grub's menu.lst (if grub legacy) like root(hd4,0) -> root(hd0,0) (as an example) might get you going.  Or leaving off the root(x,y).
 
[edit] I also prefer chainloading all installs - windows and linux - from a grub legacy install in a FAT32 partition and the MBR.  That way the linux distro can be installed entirely in its own partition(s) - including installing grub(whatever) in the boot sector instead of the MBR.  Then it doesn't matter if it's grub2 or legacy, and changing/updating the distro doesn't step on the main grub or the MBR.

BTW, this might get more replies in the Linux board.
 
Z.

Thank you all very much for your advice.
 
I wanted to install the two operating systems on separate hard drives, and yesterday I successfully did it!

How I managed to do that:
The Marvell chip, which controls the SATA III, messes up the sequence of hard drives booting in BIOS, to which (sequence) GRUB was set up during Linux installation. And therefore during the first start up of the operating system, the GRUB boot loader could not correctly identify its boot partition and kept sending me the "error 22" message. So now I have sorted it out.

So that's the issue to be addressed when installing Linux on a motherboard with SATA III controlled by the Marvell chip.

So I've managed to solve my problem, thank you all very much!
 
Regards Tutankhamun.