What I have is a hard drive divided into many partitions. C:\ Windows D:\ Where I want to install Manjaro E:\ Windows Recovery F:\ Linux Recovery (Where I can put the iso files) Using a USB or CD\DVD is not an option. I've read some guides on how to install from the hd, but they were aimed more at Ubuntu or Fedora. I'm sure it can be done using Manjaro, but I'd like some details if anyone knows how. Please and thank you.
I'm pretty sure this isn't possible, but I'm definitely following this thread to see if it's done. What computer are you using where no USB or CD\DVD is possible. And you must realize, if you ever got this working and the drive fails, you would be starting all over.
I installed Windows 10 just yesterday off a HDD connected to my PC via e-SATA. I used DISKPART to format the drive keeping the size to 32gb and formated in fat32. Loaded the files onto it and Win 10 install without any errors. This was onto a seperate HDD though. Are you talking about install from one partition onto another partition on the same HDD ?
Just tested this out with Win 8.1 x64. installing off an e-SATA HDD onto a SATA HDD. Worked well and only took 15 mins. ( Mind you I have never really timed it using a USB to be honest ) Tomorrow I may well test install from one partition to another on the same HDD. Could be fun finding out. Using an Asus Z77 UEFI motherboard, with only an i3 inside.
Just tried to install Win 8.1 off one partition onto another on the same HDD.. NO...It would NOT do it.. Had fun trying this though. Somebody clever might know a way. can I ask why using a USB is out of the question ?
Hello GOD666 - There might be a way to do what you describe using Unetbootin. I remember reading about it a long time ago but I don't remember all the details that are involved. I'm not sure, but it might only apply to a situation where you're installing Linux on an empty disk and not to one where there are existing disk partitions. Give me a chance to find it and test it on my own system first, since I don't like posting any procedures or instructions I'm not 100% certain about. Give me some time and I'll post back with a yea or nay for you.
I think John's onto something - a hardrive install from the Windows bootloader using Unetbootin may be the easiest.
Hello GOD666 - I've downloaded the Windows version of Unetbootin and a Manjaro .iso file, and have managed to boot into a live CD session of Manjaro from Windows. Now I'm wrestling with installation. When I try using the graphic based installer, I've found it does not detect the existing Windows disk partitions - not good. And when I try using the text based installer, I've found that cfdisk does detect the existing Windows partitions, but does not display their start and end sectors. This makes it impossible to specify the start and end sectors for any new partitions. Give me some more time to play around with this and see if I can figure out if I'm doing something wrong here or if it's a dead end.
OP - Is this a MBR drive of GPT? MBR is four partitions max., and a typical Windows installation creates a (no drive letter assigned) 100-500MB 'system reserved' partition. That makes five. That makes things tough. GPT supports 128 partitions. Four of them are reserved, but that still leaves 124 partitions one can boot to. (But I'm still waiting for a YouTube video showing a drive with 124 OSs installed). I was wondering if something like Rmprep/Easy2Boot would work, but I think it uses only bootable ISOs - not really understanding of it's full capabilities, limitations. Still, I like this concept for those stuck with only a single boot drive. And, while you can have multiple boot partitions, only one can be active at a time. One would need a program that is installed and runs on all four partitions, letting you select which will be active at the next restart. @Superfly - I thought I read somewhere that microSD was for storage only. No BIOS/UEFI has the ability to see them as a boot device. (But good luck!)
You can have 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions and one extended partition containing any number of logical partitions.
Hello GOD666 - Update: I made a bit more progress. I did some Googling and found that you need to use "manjaro" as the password to open Gparted in a live session. Then I created an extended disk partition using the unallocated space on the disk, and created logical partitions for swap, root, and home. Then I tried running the graphical installer again and found that it still does not detect the three existing Windows disk partitions, nor does it detect the three new Linux system partitions. The next step is to try the text based installer again. Wish me luck.
In addition to what thornin0815 said, MBR (logical/extended) partitions are not limited to OSs. In Linux you can set up any number of partitions for many needs. Like; /bin, /boot, /dev, /etc, /home, /lib, /opt, etc. (just about all "folders" in the / "folder") can all be separate partitions. BIOS/MBR can boot from SD media, and install Linux distros from SD cards. I am not sure about UEFI.
Thanx, some bios' have it running off the USB controller which makes it bootable - mine doesn't thus the need for PXE - it has been done though, been a while since I attempted it, but will be interesting to revisit it.