Re: dual grub install?

[Chris Murphy]

On Jun 6, 2012, at 2:43 PM, Tom Davies wrote:

> Win7 is about the first time Windows has automatically installed the type of 
> "Recovery Partition" that has previously only been found on laptops.  It's a 
> cheap way of avoiding giving people a Recovery Cd/Dvd or a LIVE Boot type of 
> media that could be used to repair a system.  

CD/DVDs are irritating.. They're slow. They're not particularly reliable, 
certainly not to be used for storing data you care about on. And they are space 
inefficient. They also get misplaced. They aren't updatable, tending to be 
single use (unless you get RW media) and thus aren't ecologically friendly.

Mac OS X since 10.7 also creates a 600MB Recovery HD boot partition. This is 
used for making file system repair on the primary boot volume since HFS+/X do 
not support online repairs. (Nor does NTFS, I think.) It is also used for 
initially booting when enabling full disk encryption, as of course the primary 
boot volume is encrypted and can't be booted from until a minimal kernel and 
system are loaded. Presently, OS Prober doesn't recognize this Recovery HD, so 
an entry isn't created for it.


Chris Murphy