Dual Booting Two HDDs

[Spoof]

Hey, I have been wanting to try out linux for awhile now, and I just got another hard drive to try it out on. I still have windows, but it is on a seperate hard drive, and I want to be able to choose which drive to boot to when I start up my computer.

My setup: Hard drive one: IDE with windows

Hard Drive two: SATA with linux (fedora 7)

Do I have to reinstall linux or something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[athlon_crazy]

just get install with grub bootloader.

[jpalfree]

You should be able to set your bios to boot the linux hard drive. Assuming this works, you can go into linux and edit your /boot/grub/grub.conf and add an option to boot windows. You should just be able to add something like this:

title=Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

That configuration assumes that your computer recognizes the windows hard drive as the first hard drive. If it is the second hard drive, change (hd0,0) to (hd1,0).

If your windows hard drive has more than one partition then you MIGHT need to change the (hd0,0) to something like (hd0,1) if the C: drive is the second partition, or (hd0,2) if it is the third and so on...

Hope that helps.

[Spoof]

Awesome, thanks for the quick replies, except that now I get Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format.
It says booting up windows then shows:
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
And then the error is there. It is pretty weird.

[devils casper]

Correct code is:

title Windows XP
      rootnoverify (hd1,0)
      map (hd0) (hd1)
      map (hd1) (hd0)
      chainloader +1

In case it doesn't work, post the output of fdisk -l command.

[Spoof]

It works. Thanks a lot. You guys rock.

[devils casper]

Glad to help you Spoof !
Have fun with Linux and do post back if you have any query.

[jpalfree]

devils_casper, what exactly did those 'map' commands do? I am unfamiliar with them and am thus puzzled as to how that worked (or what was wrong).

[devils casper]

Windows Boot Loader must be installed in the MBR/Boot Sector of Hard Disk plugged in as Primary Master only. When GRUB chainloads Windows Boot Loader installed Secondary Hard Disk, because of map code, It appears to Windows that HD is plugged in as Primary Master.

[sansan]

Hi,
Please add below lines in your /etc/grub.conf
map (hdo) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
title Winows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Hey, I have been wanting to try out linux for awhile now, and I just got another hard drive to try it out on. I still have windows, but it is on a seperate hard drive, and I want to be able to choose which drive to boot to when I start up my computer.

My setup: Hard drive one: IDE with windows

Hard Drive two: SATA with linux (fedora 7)

Do I have to reinstall linux or something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.