Not sure if it's for hardware forum, but seen similar questions here. I want to install fresh linux distro(not decided which one, probably Ubuntu or Arch, definitely 64 bit) on my new home HW. It has one 120 gb SSD and one 3 Tb HDD with win7 pre-installed on SSD. I want to install with less headache, so I'd like to make minimum changes to the existing setup/partitioning, keep existing windows to dual-boot. What I have so far:

120 Gb SSD: MBR/BIOS windows 7 installed. Small(250 Mb, NTFS) windows "system reserved" partition, then NTFS partition(occupies all the left space, C: drive)
3 TB HDD: GPT. 1 big NTFS partition occupies the whole drive.(F: drive)

My MB is more or less new(ASUS P9X79), so UEFI support is OK.

1. Do I have to bother and convert my windows 7 installation to UEFI(and hence convert SSD from MBR to GPT) to be able to install linux in UEFI mode? Or is it possible to boot linux in UEFI and windows in BIOS(legacy) mode? Or maybe it's OK to just install and use linux in BIOS mode.(EFI gives more simple multi-boot management using /boot/efi partition)

2. What's the best way to re-partition/format for linux: make some relatively small(20-40 Gb?) root JFS(or some other FS?) partition at the end of SSD, and create big EXT4 /home, /var, /tmp on HDD? Or just create one /(root) and put it on HDD? Of course I want to speed-up linux boot by using SSD, but I'll have to move/resize my existing windows partitions on SSD then.

I know it is possible to boot up a "Legacy" GNU/Linux installation from a system booting in EFI-mode; I have done this myself using Lubuntu (EFI-mode) and CrunchBang ("Legacy" mode).

Lubuntu was installed first and after CrunchBang was installed (without a bootloader) I ran `update-grub` from Lubuntu to generate a GRUB menu entry for it.

I don't know if this will work with Windows though.

You may have problems booting an MBR disk in EFI-mode -- this is firmware-dependent, and may not work at all.

I think Windows 7 is not EFI aware. I slightly remember that it does supports GPT Partitions.

veerain
Win7 is EFI aware(and creates EFI FAT32 partition called MSR if installed in EFI mode). But it is EFI bootable only off GPT disk, that's why converting windows 7 to EFI leads to mandatory converting disk to GPT, BTW both conversions are possible without data loss or full re-install. The question is - could I install linux in EFI mode(on the same drive or not) and keep existing Win7 still bootable in BIOS mode? Or I must have both systems only BIOS bootable then. BTW converting linux to EFI boot later seems to be also possible.

It is -- I have done this with several distributions.

1 members found this post helpful.

OK, thanks. So, it seems the less painful installation option for me is to just put linux on 3 Tb GPT drive, creating the only partition for root at the end. But no fast boot in this case

I wouldn't say that:
The firmware is slow on this particular boot -- it's usually ~2seconds...