Which order will I put my hard drives?

[ConLog]

Hi all!

I have three hard drives which I had configured as follows:

SATA HD 1 - Windows Vista
SATA HD 2 - Ubuntu Linux 8.04
PATA HD 1 - Files

I had enormous problems trying to get the whole setup working because grub seen the hard drives in a different order from the BIOS (Please Ubuntu - sort this out!!!).

Anyway, I have ordered a PATA to SATA converter for the PATA hard drive to effectively give me three SATA hard drives.

What is the best order to place these three hard drives?....

SATA HD 1 - Windows Vista
SATA HD 2 - Ubuntu Linux
SATA HD 3 - Files

or

SATA HD 1 - Windows Vista
SATA HD 2 - Files
SATA HD 3 - Ubuntu Linux

TIA.

Colin.

[smolloy]

IMO, it doesn't really matter. I'm not sure if the PATA drive is faster than the SATA drive, but you could think of using the faster one for the OS, and the slower one for the files.

But then again, if you so a lot of stuff that requires lots of accesses to your files, then you should probably put the files on the faster drive.

It depends on your needs really.

[oz]

What is the best order to place these three hard drives?....

SATA HD 1 - Windows Vista
SATA HD 2 - Ubuntu Linux
SATA HD 3 - Files

or

SATA HD 1 - Windows Vista
SATA HD 2 - Files
SATA HD 3 - Ubuntu Linux

I don't run Windows but would probably go with the first option if I did.

[devils casper]

Order should be this, imho :

SATA HD 1 - Ubuntu Linux
SATA HD 2 - Windows Vista
SATA HD 3 - Files

Ubuntu's GRUB will handle Dual boot pretty well if its installed in First Hard disk.

[ConLog]

IMO, it doesn't really matter. I'm not sure if the PATA drive is faster than the SATA drive, but you could think of using the faster one for the OS, and the slower one for the files.

But then again, if you so a lot of stuff that requires lots of accesses to your files, then you should probably put the files on the faster drive.

It depends on your needs really.

Sorry I should have clarified things a bit....

Windows Vista is on a Western Digital SATA 150GB Raptor Hard Drive
Ubuntu Linux is on a Samsung SATA 160GB newish Hard Drive
and Files is on an older and slower Samsung PATA 160GB Spinpoint Hard Drive

I'm starting from scratch because when I upgraded Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 it screwed up big time.

From the replies it would appear it does not matter what order I connect the hard drives so thanks for the replies guys.

[devils casper]

From the replies it would appear it does not matter what order I connect the hard drives

It does matter. Sometimes GRUB doesn't boot up other installed OSes if you install it in MBR of Harddisk that doesn't have Linux distro installed.
As I suggested earlier, Linux disk should be first. In this setup, if anything goes wrong with any OS in future, other OSes will boot up fine without any problem.

[ConLog]

It does matter. Sometimes GRUB doesn't boot up other installed OSes if you install it in MBR of Harddisk that doesn't have Linux distro installed.
As I suggested earlier, Linux disk should be first. In this setup, if anything goes wrong with any OS in future, other OSes will boot up fine without any problem.

Ok, that sounds good!

I had some problems removing grub from the boot sector of my Windows hard disk when I removed Linux so your suggestion is probably the best way for me to go.

Thanks devils casper.

Colin.

[ConLog]

devils casper,

I configured my whole system the way you suggested and the whole setup works fantastic.

SATA 1 - Ubuntu Linux 8.10
SATA 2 - Windows Vista Home Premium
PATA 1 - Files

Thanks for your advice.

Colin.