Boot Ubuntu from a floppy on to a 2nd HD?

[Keith]

On Fri, 11 May 2007 10:26:58 -0400, "Xn Nooby" <xnooby at gmail.com> wrote:

>I have a work PC that has two HD's, and was thinking of installing Ubuntu
>7.04 on the 2nd drive.  I would *not* want to modify the machine's boot
>process, since this is not really my machine.  Is it possible to install
>Ubuntu to a 2nd internal drive, and have it not touch the MBR - and then
>boot from a floppy?  That way, when I am done with the PC, I could just
>remove the floppy and reformat the 2nd drive.  If I clobbered the 1st drive,
>it would be "bad", so I do not want to risk doing that.


 I know in some flavors of Linux when you install GRUB you can install a MBR
on a floppy disk and boot from the floppy. It is usually a pretty good method,
however make sure you make several MBR boot floppies in case one of them goes
bad. 
 Another thing you can do is when you install Linux is install the GRUB boot
sector on the second hard disk
/dev/hdb1 
after installing Linux reboot from the live CD and using a floppy or usb drive
create a copy of the boot sector:
as root

sudo su

dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=linux.bin bs=512 count=1 

cp linux.bin /path/to/floppy/or/usb


boot into windows XP or 2k

Open notepad and edit c:\boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
c:\linux.bin="Linux"

copy linux.bin to c:\ from the device you copied it to
and now when you start XP you can choose which system you want to boot.