Guest Electrik Prodigy Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 Sorry if this has already been posted I'm thinking about taking the plunge into Linux to see what this commotion is all about. I may be getting a 2nd hard drive for christmas, and if I do, I plan on dualbooting Mandrake and Windows XP. I post this to ask: Is it possible for me to have a dual boot with 1 hard drive dedicated completely to Linux, and the 2nd one Windows XP? If so, would you please give instructions on how to do so, or a link. Thank you very much for reading this post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 It's very possible. In fact I have been doing it since I have a second hard drive to play around with :) Anyway, to do so, during installation in the partitioning section, just put your mandrake partitions into your second hard drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisM Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 (edited) It's very possible. In fact I have been doing it since I have a second hard drive to play around with :) Anyway, to do so, during installation in the partitioning section, just put your mandrake partitions into your second hard drive. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nice one DragonMage I thought of doing this some time ago, but was advised by a friend that it probably wouldn't work, because 1 HDD would be primary drive and the other set as slave, this way the PC would *automatically* boot to the primary HDD. In my winbloze daze I once had a PC running 2 HDDs, I used the second purely for storage. So anyway,I left it at that, and happily dived in at the deep end and installed Mandrake as the sole OS - and have never looked back. However, just out of interest and curiosity (and the possibility that I'd be able to get away with this at work - and maybe at home I might install a 2nd to compare and constrast against another Linux flavour), how does the boot up process work - I know that on a dual boot with only 1 HDD, Mandrake gives a menu to boot into Linux or Windows (and defaults to Mandrake if no selection is made). How does it work with 2 separate HDDs? Cheers. Edited December 2, 2004 by ChrisM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 I know that on a dual boot with only 1 HDD, Mandrake gives a menu to boot into Linux or Windows (and defaults to Mandrake if no selection is made). How does it work with 2 separate HDDs? It works exactly the same. :) As long as you have the boot record (Lilo) on the first sector your primary or Windoze drive. So basically, add the second drive, install CD-1, choose custom install, and you see both drives listed. /sda will be your primary with windoze on it. /sdb is your new drive. Create and format your partitions on /sdb, stick the bootloader on the windoze drive and your all done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisM Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 I know that on a dual boot with only 1 HDD, Mandrake gives a menu to boot into Linux or Windows (and defaults to Mandrake if no selection is made). How does it work with 2 separate HDDs? It works exactly the same. :) As long as you have the boot record (Lilo) on the first sector your primary or Windoze drive. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> xcellent - think I'll give this a try sometime with a winbloze machine at work. Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
durvish Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 Jeez anon did you have to rub it in My poor butt only has an hda and a hdb, but one day it will say sda! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 Jeez anon did you have to rub it in My poor butt only has an hda and a hdb, but one day it will say sda! :D I have another box that says /hda /hdb :P :D :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crispus Posted December 2, 2004 Report Share Posted December 2, 2004 I do this as well with great success. My only recommendation would be to get everything setup with WinXP first. I have 2 120GB HDs. I installed the first HD and then setup WinXP exclusively on the first HD. I then installed a second HD. I used WinXP to recognize it, then partition and format it. I split the 2nd HD into 3 partitions. 1 32MB FAT32 to be used to share between the OSs, 1 40 MB NTFS partition to store WinXP backup data and images, and I left the rest of the drive unformatted. Then when I went to install Mandrake I asked it to install it to the unused portion of the second HD. Worked without any major hiccups. I can then use the FAT32 partiion to share bookmarks, mail profiles (for firefox and thunderbird), data, wallpaper images, etc. between the 2 OSs Regards, Crispus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jaredx Posted January 15, 2005 Report Share Posted January 15, 2005 Yeh it's easy if you can see the drive that you want to boot first 1 setup the hard drive jumpers to the mandrake disk as the master and the others the slaves 2 goto mandrake linux control center and goto the boot loader secten the edit the boot loader and add the drive you wish to dule boot with (name it ) Have fun the end Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reb2 Posted January 16, 2005 Report Share Posted January 16, 2005 as said by others above i have dual booted windoze and mandrake for quite a while too without problem (not xp though) i alway's set windows up on the first hard-drive and install it first. and linux on the second. mainly because M$ o/s's don't like booting from anywhere else but the first drive !!! (this may have changed in xp, but i wouldn't know, because i refuse to look at it ). anyhow install windows first, because if you don't it will erase your bootloader for some reason M$ o/s's (win95/98/me) think they are the only ones and re-write the master boot record regardless of whats already there which means a re-install of lilo or grub or whatever boot loader you use. no problems with mandrake just insert the first install cd and press F1 at the boot screen and when at the prompt "$" type rescue and choose re-install boot loader, shutdown and re-boot.......sorted. but installing windows first saves you doing all that. i put this up only in the interest of helping out a newbie like myself regards reb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted January 16, 2005 Report Share Posted January 16, 2005 Where you have an OS installed isn't always the reason why it won't boot. Usually it is because the boot loader isn't savvy enough to "fake" the OS into thinking its on the boot drive. For example, with some boot loaders, they will have an install mode and you can actually specify your OS that you are going to install plus where you want to install (wherever). It will then hide the other partitions to make the new OS's partition the first partition. After boot up, the partition is C: (even though its not really the first). Things you can do with a lilo boot loader at minimum is: 1. Install Win 98/XP/2k in the first partition 2. Install Linux elsewhere. 3. Install other distributions or complete linux distributions at the same time. In other words run Mandrake and Gentoo at the same time (there's a faq on this). The one thing that I haven't tried is installing XP elsewhere than the first. Not sure if LILO can deal with that. I wouldn't be surprised if it can though.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest belbowls Posted February 5, 2005 Report Share Posted February 5, 2005 (edited) I have had this configuration in the past. Had it working flawlessly with Win XP on the primary and Mandrake 9 on a partition on the Slave HD. I recently wiped all partitions from both drives and clean installed both Windoze and Installed Mandrake 10 (thanks to some help with partitioning from Ix in that thread-- cheers). I configured the boot loader at the end of the Mandrake install, making only one change from the default settings which was changing the time out before selecting the default OS from 10 seconds to 20. The machine boots directly into Windoze. I assume I need to reinstall LiLo and make sure it goes to the Primary drive but I'm not POSITIVE and didn't want to gack up all of the work I've done up to this point. currently the Lilo Conf is: Lilo with graphical menu, /dev/hda. - What is my best course of action? I just want to configure it correctly to avoid undoing all of my work (on this set up) up to this point. Edited February 5, 2005 by belbowls Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 5, 2005 Report Share Posted February 5, 2005 Did you install lilo to the mbr? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest belbowls Posted February 5, 2005 Report Share Posted February 5, 2005 Did you install lilo to the mbr? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That is what I'm not POSITIVE about. In the configuration choices, it listed dev/hda as "Windows" in the description text. I didn't see anything that was (clear to me, being extremly novice even with having done this sucessfully twice before in the last 5 years). It is obviously not seeing it or prompting me (I know what I should see with the graphical LiLo and it jumps right into WinXP without the boot loader even being acknowledged). :as a thought, would there e anything else I can do like check the BIOS settings /boot order?: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 6, 2005 Report Share Posted February 6, 2005 I would install lilo to the mbr. First, using the emergency recovery proceedure, uninstall lilo. (Boot with disk 1, hit F1, type "rescue" and look at the menu presented) After uninstalling, reinstall lilo to the mbr. Many people mistakenly install it to / instead. Chaining the boot loaders is a pain. Just use lilo. (I do!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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