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Thread: 2 hard drives

  1. #11
    Right turn Clyde Nokia's Avatar
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    Im only 95% sure about this but unless you have a raid system you cant simpily slave a Hard drive from another and put an operating system on it.

    The reason for this is that the BIOS will load a boot program that it has stored in your master boot record, here it will read your drives Volume Boot Code. This is what tells anything that wants to know the exact state of the disc, i.e how many partitions it has, how many o/s's are installed on it etc. This is where third party boot loaders are also stored (lilo).

    The way you have configured your system however means that you will have two MBR's, with lilo obviously being on the linux hdd. The BIOS needs to be told this and what MBR to go to! By default it will go to the lowest lettered fixed drive and read that MBR (C drive).

    So I would guess that you have windows on your C drive??

    This is why linux is not being loaded, you can reconfigure it all day long but it wont ever load, hence when you take the windows drive out, the BIOS then goes to the linux drive MBR and loads linux!

    There is three ways I can think of to get around this, either:

    Get a Mother Board that supports RAID
    Partition one drive and install both Operating Systems on this
    Install Linux on your C drive, as this has LILO and will allow you to boot to windows if you want. As long as the BIOS loades the MBR with LILO in it you should be able to boot the second drive (maybe??) Im not to sure about this way as when LILO sends the boot instruction to the second drive it is still going to encounter a second MBR so it will either boot as normal (hopefully) or say, what the f*** is this doing here and crash!

    You will have to experiment!

    I would say partitioning the master hdd is the best answer, you can still assign space on the second hdd to each o/s, aslong as it is properly formated with the right file system (ntfs,ext2). You just need to have lilo in the MBR that the BIOS loads from.

    So, if I was you, I would partition both drive 50/50 with NTFS and ext2, instal both O/S's on my C drive and then assign the remaining space on the second drive to each O/S!

    Problem solved!!!!(hopefully!)

    //edit: read my post here for more info on MBR's etc: http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=260546

  2. #12
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    Cool

    For what it is worth, Partition Magic will negate the need for the second hard drive as long as your hard drive is large enough to support the extra partition. I was always paranoid about possible heating problems with 2 hard drives. Then again I use mini towers.

    Mike

  3. #13
    Right turn Clyde Nokia's Avatar
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    For what it is worth, Partition Magic will negate the need for the second hard drive
    But then you lose the extra storage capacity an additional hard drive gives you.

    as long as your hard drive is large enough to support the extra partition.
    You still use the same space when you partition a hard drive, your not really adding anything onto it you just dividing it up!

  4. #14
    Senior Member Zonewalker's Avatar
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    Im only 95% sure about this but unless you have a raid system you cant simpily slave a Hard drive from another and put an operating system on it.
    good job it was only 95% sure nokia.... otherwise I'd have to slap you - I have two (fairly standard IDE) hard drives in my box... one with XP one with linux one .

    First Riot make sure you have one drive set as master the other as slave - pretty much what fyrewall said. Then install XP on the primary drive and linux on the slave drive. You then have two options

    1. install lilo (or grub or whatever your using) to the MBR on your primary drive - have it point to Windows on hda and linux on hdb... thats all - similar to what you would do if you had one drive with two partitions. except you're pointing to different drives is all.

    2. install lilo to floppy and have an entry for linux in it pointing to hdb. Then when you wish to start windows... boot up as normal... if you want linux ~ pop the floppy in the drive (make sure the computer will boot from floppy!) and then boot up.

    I've used the second option (and TBH I'd advise you to do the same) mainly because its less hassle in the long run..... for example sometimes I'll play around with different distros.. its easier to write the new bootloader to the floppy with no fear of fscking the MBR (not much of a pain I know but I'd rather not have it happen) - and should I ever want to get rid of linux (gasp!) then its simply a matter of reformating the slave drive as NTFS and no mucking around with the MBR.

    Z
    Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

  5. #15
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    Maybe I miss understood you. I thought that you wanted to add another HD to support another OS. If you have a large enough HD and if storage isn't a problem then Partition Magic meets your needs.

    Like I said just my .2c worth.

    Mike

  6. #16
    Right turn Clyde Nokia's Avatar
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    Cheers for putting me straight Z I was'nt sure about that!

    Im not really in to linux and didnt know you could put lilo on to a different drives MBR but hey, you learn something everyday!

    Cheers, Nokia

  7. #17
    Senior Member Zonewalker's Avatar
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    no prob nokia.... I wouldn't say I'm really 'into' linux as such (not the way some folks are) I've just played around enough to have some mild comprehension

    [edit] Riot... if its of any help I can forward you a copy of my lilo.conf file... might help you figure out what goes where.... but you will obviously have to modify it for your own set up. PM me if you do want a copy.
    Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

  8. #18
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    thank you for all of your help it realy helped.

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