Installing To Another Drive

[Skeeter]

I had previously partitioned my harddrive and installed Linux on one part of it.
I had a few problems and didn't like the way Grub stayed when I removed Linux.
Here's what I have now:
I reformatted and have Windoh's XP on C drive with 70GB. I made a D drive with 70 GB.
I want to install Linux on the D drive (I think...unless I shouldn't do that.)
How will I access Linux if I do this? Will my computer boot into Windoh's by default as usual? Will I double-click on "My Computer" then choose The D drive with Linux installed on it?
I don't want to have to go through removing the Grub thing as I had to do last time I removed Linux.
My ideal thing would be to be able to double-click on D drive and run Linux without having re-start problems with my computer.
I'm sorry if this makes no sense. I don't really know how to explain it.
Thank you for your help and patience.

[theNbomr]

Grub is the bootloader that allows you to dual-boot. The Windows bootloader only knows Windows, but grub is OS-agnostic.
You cannot load Linux from Windows XP (you could with Win9x).
If you want to remove grub, simply install it on the MBR. When you wan to remove it, you can use the Windows installation/recovery disk to over-write grub with the Windows bootloader. Chances are, Windows will do this at some point without your consent, and then you will need to use the Linux installer/rescue disk to re-install grub.
You can configure any of the installed OS's to be the default in grub.
For someone in your position, I would suggest installing Windows and Linux on separate drives. Do the Windows install first, then remove the drive and replace it with the Linux drive. Install Linux, and leave the drive installed. Re-install the Windows drive as the second drive, and add an entry for Windows in the Linux grub configuration. Now, either drive can work standalone as the principle drive if you decide to go fully back to the dark side.
--- rod.

[Jonathan183]

I reformatted and have Windoh's XP on C drive with 70GB. I made a D drive with 70 GB.
I want to install Linux on the D drive (I think...unless I shouldn't do that.)

For someone in your position, I would suggest installing Windows and Linux on separate drives.

It sounds as though you have a single hard drive in the system rather than two hard drives. If you have two hard drives then the approach suggested by theNbomr is a good idea.

If you have a single hard drive then you have a couple of options ... I suggest:-
1. install Linux in a VM in Windows, that way you do not need to reboot to access it
2. do a Wubi install of Ubuntu, which will make removing Linux easy for you in future.
3. Install Linux to a partition and use Grub as the bootloader installed to the MBR but also get a copy of Supergrub so you can use this to restore Windows boot if you decide to uninstall Linux.
4. Install Linux to a partition and install grub to the boot record of that partition, and setup Windows bootloader to dual boot.

If you post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

we will have a better idea about partition layout ... the -l has a small L

[Skeeter]

Thank you so much for helping me out.

1. install Linux in a VM in Windows, that way you do not need to reboot to access it

Number 1 sounds like what I want. VM= virtual memory?

[devils casper]

Its virtual machine or virtual box. Check this tutorial on Ubuntu installation.

[Skeeter]

Oh thank you! I'm reading up on it now.