[ubuntu-uk] dual boot with 2 HDDs

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Mon Jul 26 17:55:53 BST 2010


On 26 July 2010 17:41, Norman Silverstone <norman at littletank.org> wrote:

> You could be right but this presupposes that I know how to do such a
> thing which, for the record, I do not.

When installing, it's dead easy. Choose custom disk partitioning, give
about 10-20GB to the root partition (called "/") and the rest to
/home, leaving about 2GB at the end for a swap partition.

Once you've already installed, it's a bit more tricky, and if you
don't know what you're doing, it's probably best left alone.


> Perhaps we do not mean the same thing by 1st and 2nd drives. In the old
> set up the computer would boot into Ubuntu unless the boot procedure was
> interrupted by pressing Esc. XP could then be selected and the boot
> process continued with the drive which had XP installed.

On the POST screen of your computer, it should list what hard disks it
can see as it boots. That is the order I am talking about. The first
hard is the first one to appear, the second comes after it. This is
not some arcane technical concept!

I wrote a guide to partitioning here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/23/reg_linux_guide_2/


> The installations were done on different PCs of similar specifications.

Then I stand by my earlier comment:
>> Ubuntu will probably handle a move fine. Windows probably won't.

There are 2 ways to dual boot. I favour the "official" way, which
seems to me to be the easiest, simplest and most straightforward. It
is this, which I already have outlined:

[1] Install Windows on the first, primary, hard disk. Leave space for
Linux on that or another drive. Windows puts its bootloader on the 1st
primary partition of the 1st drive.

[2] Install Linux in the remaining space. Linux replaces Windows'
bootloader with its own bootloader, which displays a menu. From this,
you can choose which OS to start up.

Others seem to favour using the BIOS to change which is the bootable
drive, so that neither OS can boot the other or is even aware of the
other. This is what "Yorvyk" is recommending in this thread. This way,
both drives have a single bootloader and you use the PC's firmware to
select which drive to boot.



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