Got my Ubuntu disk,got two hard drives,can i dual boot off of a seperate drive?

[tinyvillager]

 Ok,my machine has two hard drives,one drive has Windows XP Pro and the other has nothing (or will have Ubuntu)

 Is it possible to boot from the second drive ?

Complete newbie to linux,and this is my primary machine so i don't want to bork it.

Any input is appreciated.

[Gothi[c]]

it's possible.
there are however quite a number of ways to do it.

I'm not sure if the ubuntu installer will build your grub boot menu correctly by default or install grub in the correct harddrive's mbr, so it may or may not require some hacking around.

If your system just starts up to XP with no boot menu after the ubuntu install, boot from the live cd, and mount your ubuntu partition, and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

[JennyB]

 Ok,my machine has two hard drives,one drive has Windows XP Pro and the other has nothing (or will have Ubuntu)

 Is it possible to boot from the second drive ?

Complete newbie to linux,and this is my primary machine so i don't want to bork it.

Any input is appreciated.

-tinyvillager (March 14, 2007, 12:12 AM)

I got caught doing this on a similar system. Ubuntu installed OK (the process is actually very easy) but grub went on the XP disk and that refused to boot. That is, XP showed as anoption on the GRUB boot menu, but selecting it laoded nothing. I had to reinstall XP, which was by no means so easy 

My advice: disconnect the XP disc and install Ubuntu standalone on the other one. Then reconnect the XP disc and use the BIOS to select which to boot from.

[jgpaiva]

I have been using xp and ubuntu for a few years now, and it works great.
Current version of ubuntu automatically installs and configures grub for windows and ubuntu. (notice that you need to have both disks connected during install).
The only problem i've found is that sometimes ubuntu (magically) changes the grub.conf file which makes grub's configuration go away. I would definitelly recomend you to backup that file.

[f0dder]

If you remove the XP disk while installing (but leave the ubuntu in the position (pri/sec, master/slave) it will have when the XP disk is re-attached!), the boot manager goes on the ubuntu disk, and you can then use your BIOS boot menu (usually F8) to choose the right disk when booting. At least that's safe++ and ought to work

[Gothi[c]]

...and you can then use your BIOS boot menu (usually F8) to choose the right disk when booting

IF your BIOS supports it. Better check first.
Many older BIOSes (expecially motherboards with IDE only, no sata) don't let you switch between disks without changing master/slave jumpers on your hard drives, etc,...

[Dirhael]

While it's not freeware, I'd recommend you to check out BootIt NG. It's what I use to tripple-boot XP, Vista & Ubuntu. It works perfectly, and the main advantage by doing it this way is that I can hide the different partitions/disk depending on what OS I choose to boot. This way, there's no chance of any OS installation messing things up, as they all think their respecive partition is the primary boot disk
Oh, and in addition to being a boot manager, it also comes complete with partition managment (like Partition magic etc., only not installed in the OS) & disk imaging. Best $35 I've ever used on a single application

[f0dder]

True, gothic... but then it'd have to be a really old motherboard. While I can't remember if my old Athlon700 system had a bios boot menu, it certainly was able to boot from other drives by entering the bios settings and changing boot order.

[nite_monkey]

What I was doing when I was using the vista beta, you could un plug your xp hard drive, and plug in the other one in it's place, and just shutdown and swap drives when you want to switch operating systems. Yes I know that isn't very good, but if all else fails, it's an Idea.

[tinyvillager]

 Thanks for the responses everyone.

 I've been hammering away at it.When i tried the second drive dual boot,i got grub errors.
Then i said screw it,installed it on main disk....went well until logon.It froze up! No mouse
no keyboard.When running it in live mode,everything works,sound,everything.

Don't know,i'm running 6.10,maybe i'll give it another try when the new release comes out,which
i hear is very close.

I'm bummed,in live mode it looks really cool.

Ok,got it working ,i'm a moron.This is cool.