Anyone know where I might be able to get ahold of a Double pole, forty throw switch? I want to dualboot Linux and XP, from two different HDDs. Juuuuust kidding, Would some kind l33t textmonkey point this newbie in the direction of a dualboot guide?
most distros will do it automatically so its not much to worry about but if you stick the linux drive as the main boot drive then your windows drive would remain completely untouched as the bootloader would write over the windows master boot record
Not sure which distro you're going to use, but here's Ubuntu's dual boot basics. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WindowsDualBootHowTo It might help?
I was about to post a new thread on this, I'm looking at probably installing XP Pro 64 bit on one hard drive (sata) and then have a distro of linux (suse or redhat or ubuntu) on another drive, would it make more sense to completely install the Windows 1st then setup linux? or linux then XP? Wondering how linux would pick up the dual boot environment, havent tried 2 os's in same system before, just separate ones -ooooo looks like that ubuntu thing is pretty detailed, I'll just use that
TheMuffinMan, I haven't done dualboot - yet - but I think the easiest way is XP first, then your Linux of choice. Linux - surprise, surprise - has far more intelligent boot & partition managers that Windows. But it is also possible to go Linux-then-XP, and recover. Here's another Ubuntu Wiki page on recovery. If/when I dualboot, it's going to have to be with this method, 'cause I canned XP totally when I installed Ubuntu.
themuffinman i would install windows first and if linux is going to be on a different drive then i would just install on that and make it the first boot device so that it doesnt screw up the master boot record for xp and you can just unplug the linux one withouth having to repair xp
Thanks for the advice should i worry at all that XP would be on a SATA and linux just on a ata? Don't think it should if I do it like you guys suggested and just make the linux the first boot device, just trying to make sure there won't be any conflicts, this is my first pc built from ground up, and I'd like it to go smoothly
If I'm remembering properly, Windows doesn't like booting unless it's the primary boot device...I normally have my windows drive as my primary and then install Grub/lilo on that---then telling it that when it boots linux to look on my 2nd hard drive Sam
All the dual-boot tutorials I've seen have assumed using one partitioned hard drive, not two seperate drives. I assume that's possible - GRUB is fairly intelligent, I think - but I don't have any info. Had a funny exchange on #ubuntu IRC a while ago; someone came on asking about "duel-booting" Ubuntu and XP. I replied, "Duel-boot? Is that where you put the two OSes in the same drive and let them fight it out?" I don't think he got the joke...
It's very possible, see my post above You don't need to have windows on the primary drive (Grub can be told to fool windows), but it makes things easier... Sam
