Dual Boot Seperate Hard Drive

poppers1957 · #1 4th April 2007, 11:25 PM

I recently installed Fedora 6 on a fresh hard drive after I had removed the windos XP hard drive. Now I would like to be able to boot either as needed. At present I have the XP hard drive as the Master ide1 and Fedora as slave. Can you help me with a boot? Also there was no boot loader loaded when I installed Fedora, as far as I know. Any help would be appreciated, and I will send you some cookies.

***bob*** · #2 5th April 2007, 12:07 AM

This is pretty close to what you've done: http://jimlawrnc.mine.nu/mywiki/DualBootLinux (chocolate chip would be okay....

)

lazlow · #3 5th April 2007, 12:18 AM

The other way to go is to use drive slides (or drawers). They usually run about $15 each. You just shut down the machine, turn a key, pull one, install next, turn key, and boot. The advantage is that nether os can mess with the other. The disadvantage is that you have no access to the files on the other system. This can be gotten around by install a third drive to us for data only (usually fat so both os can read/write easily).

***bob*** · #4 5th April 2007, 12:40 AM

That's certainly one way, but simply pulling each drive once while installing, with the bootloader being placed on the mbr of each drive, means that you can accomplish the same thing by switching the boot order in the bios, thus saving that $15.00 for BEER!!

lazlow · #5 5th April 2007, 12:56 AM

It also means that they can mess with each other.

***bob*** · #6 5th April 2007, 01:09 AM

Pardon? If your only connection is the bios settings, how are they going to do that? Each would be on a different hard drive and unless you enabled linux to access the other drive, what you write to one can't really affect the other. If I'm wrong, please explain (seriously, I can't figure out how to screw it up myself - gonna need a tutorial on that one).

lazlow · #7 5th April 2007, 01:22 AM

On my motherboard (Asus 5x) selecting the boot order only changes the order it boots. The windows os still "sees" the other drive. It cannot see the files (without the addon) but It can still write to the drive (screwing things up). While this is also possible from the linux side, I am not concerned with it (linux tends to behave).

***bob*** · #8 5th April 2007, 01:42 AM

Good point! It's been so blessed long since I've had MS on my drive that I neglected that possibility. I guess it's not happening very much since I don't see posts wailing about it. Okay - you win the Choco-chips for safest solution!

jelyfish · #9 5th April 2007, 02:18 AM

ok seriously what am I missing here? I have (I think) the same setup. I just use grub to boot either or. If you don't mount the XP drive how can linux see it? And XP doesn't seem to see the linux drive because it is not NTFS. What am I missing?

lazlow · #10 5th April 2007, 02:56 AM

Jely

It cannot see the filesystem but it can see the drive. You could reformat either drive from either OS.

stoat · #11 5th April 2007, 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazlow

You could reformat either drive from either OS

True.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jelyfish

And XP doesn't seem to see the linux drive because it is not NTFS

And some may wonder how since they see no sign of the Linux partitions in Windows Explorer and never have to bother with mounting partitions in Windows. Well, in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management there they are. And in that utility, Windows XP will happily delete entire Linux partitions if you ask it to. Nevertheless, I dual boot with NTLoader and have never worried about either system doing something to the other.

***bob*** · #12 5th April 2007, 04:04 AM

Yes, I think even Lazlow would agree that millions are comfortably dual-booting linux and windows and the risks are certainly minimal. I've done it before many times and never had a problem. That link I provided does give you the option to dual boot by simply modifying the grub.conf to recognize windows on the other drive. Since you didn't remember the bootloader information, I'd believe that it was installed on the mbr of the Fedora drive. To test that, simply switch the boot order in the bios to have the Fedora drive boot first and see if you don't get a grub menu. If so, you can then do that simple modification to grub to add Windows to the boot order.

jelyfish · #13 5th April 2007, 04:12 AM

Thanx for explaining fellas -still enjoying tinkering way too much with linux 8)

<pending serious computer crash>Thanx fellas</pending> j/k

***bob*** · #14 5th April 2007, 04:26 AM

And, key to ANYTHING involving changing key systems or apps, BACK UP YOUR DATA! If you care about it, never risk it by having just one copy. I've got a spindle or two of data discs going back 10 years. Eventually, I'll be able to reinstall that DOS version of Mad Pinball and keep my points!

poppers1957 · #15 5th April 2007, 06:15 AM

WOW you people here are awesome!!!

I have a slide drawer and may use that. I love Linux and wouldn't even have M$ still on, except for Quickbooks.

However The HD with M$ on it is 200 Gig and I want to use some of that space. I will look into all of the suggestions made, and I REALLY appreciate your time. I have only been an avid Linux user a short time and would like to become an advocate. Any site suggestions would be welcomed.