Installation to dedicated disk

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 30 April 2006 19:01, Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
> It is my intention to create a dual boot environment where Windows
> XP resides wholly on the first disk (over several partitions, all
> NTFS) and Dapper Drake ubuntu resides wholly on a second disk,
> again suitably partitioned.
>
> Previous experience with ubuntu (5.10) was that the installer, or
> Lilo would attempt to write to the MBR on the first disk, thus
> wrecking the Windows installation - not a bad idea, do I hear:-)

No, it didn't wreck the Windows installation, it just overwrote the 
Windows MBR entry. The MBR is not part of the OS and your entire 
Windows install would have been unaffected.

All you need do in this case is add an appropriate entry to the 
grub/lilo config file which will boot Ubuntu.

> I want to ensure that Lilo, or Grub for that matter, installs only
> to the second, ubuntu disk and leaves my Windows boot sector alone:
> I will use the Windows XP Boot Loader to get to ubuntu.

No, that is not advisable. How will you get the XP boot loader to boot 
another OS? I've looked fairly hard for it (but not exhaustively 
[Michael, no comments please]) and have not found a chainload 
function in the Windows loader

> Is it possible for me to be assured that this is possible, and that
> the Dapper Drake installation routine will be sufficiently explicit
> so as to militate against accidents?

Why not do what all of us have been doing for 10 years?

Install grub/lilo to /dev/hda
Install Windows to /dev/hda1
Install Linux to <wherever>
Confidure grub/lilo - all OSes boot properly

-- 
If only you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five