Dual-boot - Linux on second hard drive

[yamangman]

Yep thats perfectly acceptable. As for creating a boot screen, newer interations of Linux will do it for you, which works especially well if you install Windows first and Linux second. SuSE Linux has a particularly nice install routine called YaST, which has a very nice GUI to set up a boot screen.

[DsW]

Hi guys,

Currently got XP on my SATA hard drive at the moment. Would like to dabble in Linux but until I can save the cash for a second box I'd like to install it on a second SATA drive in my current box. When I eventually get round to building a second box I'll just transfer the hard drive over.

Is it possible to set up a dual boot system with XP on one HD and Linux on the other? I would prefer to keep the OSs on seperate HDs if possible.

If its is possible then how do I go about setting up a dual boot menu?

cheers,
dave

[oyster]

Not only possible, but significantly simpler than trying to share one physical disk between Windows and Linux.

All modern user-friendly Linux distros (Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora, etc.) will add their own boot menu (to the mbr of the primary drive) that includes an option to boot into Windows if it was detected during install.

When you remove the second disk, just run "Fixmbr" from the XP CD to return Windows to its single-boot status.

[directhex]

even non-user-friendly distributions such as debian will set up grub to provide a boot menu

[oyster]

Then debian is user-friendly, by definition.

Gentoo wouldn't do that for you. Then again, Gentoo won't do ANYTHING for you. That's why I like it!