Will this dual boot scheme work?

[Liam Proven]

On 21 November 2013 00:42, Jim Byrnes <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:
> When I bought this machine it came with Windows 7.  At that time my only
> need for windows was to run TurboTax and I could do that using XP in VBox so
> I had no real need for Windows 7.  I unplugged the HD that came with the
> computer and put in a new HD and installed Ubuntu 10.04.  When 10.04 was no
> longer supported I pulled the Win 7 HD added a new HD and installed 12.04
> and dual booted with 10.04.  With XP coming to end of life it looks like
> TurboTax will no longer support XP so I want to dual boot Win 7 and 12.04.
>
> My bios will let me choose which HD to boot from.  Right now it brings up
> grub from the HD containing 10.04 and then boots 12.04.  I would like to
> pull the HD with 10.04 on it and replace it with the HD containing Win 7.
> Then tell the bios to boot from the 12.04 HD.
>
> If I do this will grub on the 12.04 HD boot and find Win 7 as a bootable OS
> and add it to the grub menu automatically so I can dual boot 12.04 and Win
> 7?

I think it should.

If you can set the Windows drive to be first in the boot sequence,
then boot the Ubuntu copy once - e.g. using a boot CD - and install
GRUB to /dev/sda, then you should be able to run both side-by-side no
problem.

Windows /might/ complain if it finds itself on the 2nd drive when it
was installed on the first, but Win7 is pretty grown-up in that regard
and should cope. On my machine, disk 0 has Mac OS X, disk 1 has Win8,
and a little of the space on the end of both has a copy of Ubuntu in
it. If I boot disk 0 using the BIOS, I get MacOS, with an entry for
Windows in the boot menu. If I boot disk 1 using the BIOS, I get the
GRUB loader and can choose Windows or Ubuntu.

Windows doesn't seem to care which way I use, even though with the
first method it's on drive 1 and with the second method it's on drive
0 (IYSWIM).

-- 
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