[ubuntu-uk] Two operating systems

[Keith Powell]

For some time now, I have had two hard drives, each in its own plug-in
mobile hard drive caddy. One has XP on it (which I still need :-( and
the other has Ubuntu on it. So I have just plugged in whichever OS I
wanted.

I'm thinking of doing away with the hard drive caddies and installing
both drives inside the computer. For ease, XP would remain on its
existing drive and be plugged into the 'master' plug on the ribbon
cable. The Ubuntu drive would be plugged into the 'slave' plug on the
IDE ribbon cable. Ubuntu would probably be a reinstall on a new, larger
hard drive, but I've not decided yet.

I see that, if I press F8 during the BIOS boot, I can select what I boot
from (different DVD drives or different hard drives). Selecting the
appropriate hard drive from F8, I think, would be better than messing
about setting GRUB up for dual booting. (Something which I don't know
how to do at the moment!) It would mean that I don't have to do anything
to the XP drive.

Is what I want to do, using F8 feasible, or would I be better setting
GRUB up?

With two hard drives, how are the jumpers set up? One master and one
slave, both master, or how?

I also have two DVD drives, one is just a player and one which will record.

Any advice will be very gratefully received.

Many thanks

Keith