[ubuntu-uk] Two operating systems

[SteVe Cook]

Keith Powell wrote:
> 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.
> 
Grub would make life easier and if you're reinstalling ubuntu grub would 
be set up for you if you have both drives in the machine.  Just connect 
the drives as normal XP as Master and ubuntu as slave.
You can do the F8 thing if you want, I know somebody that does it at 
work to hide ubuntu as they don't like unauthorised software on the 
machines, it's just a bit fiddly.

SteVe