[tyrone]

I'm proud even though it took me the better part of the weekend. first, proof!

First, proof! (Imageshack for thumbnail, then direct link to avoid going through imageshack)

First off, what my disks look like in osx.

http://tyreview.com/mini9images/pic1.png

Second, what my disks look like in XP

http://tyreview.com/mini9images/pic2.jpg

Finally, a pic showing how large the fresh backups I have are.

http://tyreview.com/mini9images/back.jpg

This is after trimming up both installations, installing every dell driver on XP and even several programs that simply ought to exist on the fastest drive or don't work as well portably. As of the pics there is a 20-30 second boot into either installation, defaulted to mac 3 second wait, hit enter+up+enter to boot XP

Full disclosure: I DID for my own reasons remove several of the official mac apps that I didn't care for such as mail, itunes and safari to save space and used an nlited version of my OEM XP SP3 disc. Parts were standard, probably exactly what you get for the 199 vostro (8GB=7.2GBG SSD, 1GB RAM), no bluetooth, no funny business.

After completely fresh XP install before drivers, programs and dual-boot, no pagefile, XP on its own took up a grand total of....480mb on the SSD and 66 MB RAM in use. As of this second, antivirus running and post-drivers, 280MB RAM being used so pagefile is laughably unnecessary.

So anyway, there you have it. I'm currently writing a guide to show you how to get to where I am, but I figured I'd start off showing my current, finished disk size. Who knows, maybe I'm the first guy to get both on one measly 8GB SSD? I even have room to install backtrack 4 Beta livecd straight to an SSD partition for pete's sake, but instead I'm going to go ubuntu on a usb-install for packet-injection and monitor mode on the built-in wireless.

It's OBVIOUSLY not ideal compared to using a 16GB SSD but it is nice to know that it's possible to pull this off, and that I don't have to go rush out and buy a 16 or 32GB SSD.

Not that it matters, but I started off trying to get either OSX or XP to boot off of SD, which was hilariously misguided. Then I entertained the idea of booting OSX from a usb stick, but either my micro-SDs and 16gb flash drive are mad slow or that's just the nature of the beast. It was like running it from a floppy. Besides, that sucks compared to running it off the SSD because you have a dongle sticking out of the mini.

So here I am. Questions?

[gQstatus05]

Lol. I was reading your prior post. Good job bro!!! I wouldn't dual boot myself but I'm sure you just made a ton of people happy. How many cups of coffee did you go through?

[tyrone]

Originally Posted by gQstatus05

Lol. I was reading your prior post. Good job bro!!! I wouldn't dual boot myself but I'm sure you just made a ton of people happy. How many cups of coffee did you go through?

well funny you mention, it wasnt as hard as i initially thought. I am a master googler and after several hours of research i came up with ways to optimize both osx and xp, and with the ease of nlite and a few guides in this forum for both osx installation and various dualboot tricks, combined with some tricks of my own, the whole process was a breeze. Honestly it took longer just waiting for all the drive imaging, backup and iso transfer to/from usb drives than actually figuring out what i needed to do. Especially the crazy slow osx disk utility, if you're trying to experiment with different imaging scenarios it becomes an exercise in patience more than anything else.

edit: i forgot to mention it took me the better part of the weekend to get it all done though

[elchubi]

Do you know you can triple boot with that small SSD? you just need about 20MB for the /boot partition on the SSD (which can be the XP partition itself if it was formated as FAT32 not as NTFS, but I will leave it that to you as I created the small partition specially for the /boot) and a SDHC card (bigger than 3GB)

The / partition should be placed on the SDHC.

What I did

1.- get ubuntu 9.04 netbook remix on a usb drive

2.- boot mini from ubuntu usb, the normal way.

3.- Once at ubuntu click on the installation icon.

4.- Once at partitioning options, select manual partion. Partition your SDHC drive with 3 partitions, one as FAT32 for common access between the three systems (/home), one as ext2 ( / ) (3GB recommended0 and one (swap) (128 MB as I have 2 GB RAM and I did this just for fun, my main OS is MacOS X)

5.- When it is about to install, when confirming options, click on Advanced and select to install grub on the /boot partition

6.- Run the installation and wait for it to complete. Once it has finished, reboot again with ubuntu from usb

7.- Open a terminal window and write

sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt

(Mount the just installed partition (assuming you did partitions as mentioned at step 4))

sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc

(Mount special partitions for the upcoming chroot environment)

sudo mount /dev/sda4(assuming /boot is on partition 4 at the ssd) /mnt/boot
sudo chroot /mnt

(Mount the /boot partition for the upcoming chroot environment and finally chroot to it)

8.- Follow only step 5 from this link booting-from-sd-card--t615.html#p47166

9.- reboot your system, and if you are using a bootloader like pcbootefi, chameleon, etc. Linux should be an option to boot from

Please write your questions/comments on this thread booting-from-sd-card--t615.html-st=0&sk=t&sd=a. This was also my late Saturday project

[tyrone]

that's funny you posted about that, I'm about to start working myself on a sd-boot ubuntu install for aircrack monitor/injection using the built in wifi. I'll let you know if i pull it off but i may have to halt since im going on vacation and dont want to mess too much with my nice new dualboot.

[tyrone]

by the way, i finally posted my guide at guide-dual-boot-+slimming-osx-xp-on-an-8gb-ssd-t7323.html

[elchubi]

Built in cards are injection capable? Yuju!

[tyrone]

Originally Posted by elchubi

Built in cards are injection capable? Yuju!

I'm almost certain they are. I'm in the process of getting it to work right now. the default broadcom sta drivers in ubuntu are a big steaming pile of cow dung, so the process pretty much involves hacking your own drivers in i think with fwcutter.

[playcs]

I've got the biggest headache installing winxp, but I finally did. However, the installation took up 3gigs. Let me describe what I did.

Dell Mini 9 Spec:
BIOS ver A03
4gig HDD
2gig Rams

1.Using a borrowed copy of windows xp w/ sp2 CD
2.Used Nlite and followed the guide from http://www.i64x.com/eeexp.php to slim down the winxp
3.Used usbprep8 & bootsect to install windows via usb flash drive using guide http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/instal ... thumb.html

It was a rocky install, some .dll couldn't be found but i just ignored it. I have a legit key but I borrowed the windows CD from someone. My hard drive reported that I used up 3gigs, however when I looked into it:

windows took up 1gig
program files took up 50mb
doc & settings took 50mb.

Where is the rest??? This was my 6th attempt to install windows.

P.S. Where can I find a good copy of windows iso w/sp3 I can install and use my cd key? My dell came with ubuntu and I'm having trouble integrating sp3 with the current windows version I have.

[palawan]

Originally Posted by tyrone

well funny you mention, it wasnt as hard as i initially thought.
edit: i forgot to mention it took me the better part of the weekend to get it all done though

great job, bro! i didn't think it was that hard, either, and after about 20+ hours (spanning several days, and possibly 2 weekends), i still kept thinking it wasn't that hard. i was stubborn. i was "greedy" as i wanted too much in one shot (wanted to resize my xp system partition, etc). finally, i realized i needed to crawl before i can run.

i got a dual-boot running now, and there is no way i can fit it in 8gb as i have hibernate with 2gb of ram in windows xp, that allows me to boot to where i left off in xp in about 20 seconds! all windows and apps where i left off. i just wish os x on the mini 9 would have the hibernate, also.

i don't even think i can have my configuration running on a 16gb ssd, so my hat's off to you!