Author Topic: Booting From Two Drives  (Read 7703 times)

cman

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Booting From Two Drives
« on: July 24, 2012, 01:24:42 AM »
I installed a second hard drive on my system which I have a copy of Fendora Linux ( I want to be ready in case the new versions of Windows get worse  :biggrin:). Anyway , do I need to add some sort of software drive selector to choose which drive to boot off ( I've been simply disabling the drive not to boot to at the system system BIOs screen )? Thanks for any information!

Vortex

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2012, 04:51:36 AM »
You can configure Fedora's boot manager grub to swicth to Windows.

Greenhorn

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2012, 04:04:29 AM »
Vortex is right. Grub is detecting any OSes at every boot.

If you install - or already have installed - Windows first and you want to install at second a Linux at a sepeate HDD you must be careful.
By default Grub gets installed at the first bootable HDD on your system. But you can - and it's recommended - tell Grub where to install.
Grub should always be installed at the Linux HDD and not at the Windows HDD, because it overwrites the Windows boot manager.

To make it easy, I tell you what I always do. I pull off the Windows HDD and then I install the Linux. Afterwards I just connect the Windows HDD and set in BIOS the Linux HDD to the first boot device. On the next boot Grub will detect the Windows HDD and includes it to the Grub boot menu.

Greenhorn
« Last Edit: July 26, 2012, 02:34:11 AM by Greenhorn »
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Gunther

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2012, 06:24:40 AM »
If you install - or yet have installed - Windows first and you want to install at second a Linux at a sepeate HDD you must be careful.
By default Grub gets installed at the first bootable HDD on your system. But you can - and it's recommended - tell Grub where to install.
Grub should always be installed at the Linux HDD and not at the Windows HDD, because it overwrites the Windows boot manager.

But overwriting the Windows boot manager isn't a big deal. Grub will start any kind of OS, including several Windows versions. Is the Windows boot manager really necessary?

Gunther
You have to know the facts before you can distort them.

mywan

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2012, 04:06:47 PM »
But overwriting the Windows boot manager isn't a big deal. Grub will start any kind of OS, including several Windows versions. Is the Windows boot manager really necessary?
The problem here is that if Grub overwrites the windows boot manager there is no windows boot manager for Grub to start windows with. The easy way is to do what Greenhorn said:
To make it easy, I tell you what I always do. I pull off the Windows HDD and then I install the Linux. Afterwards I just connect the Windows HDD and set in BIOS the Linux HDD to the first boot device. On the next boot Grub will detect the Windows HDD and includes it to the Grub boot menu.

Gunther

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2012, 08:34:37 PM »
Hi mywan,

The problem here is that if Grub overwrites the windows boot manager there is no windows boot manager for Grub to start windows with. The easy way is to do what Greenhorn said:

may be that I'm wrong. But I've running grub since a few years. My experience is this, with the configuration on my laptop: Windows XP together with Linux (32 bit) and Linux (64 bit) on one hard drive. I had to install Windows first and after that I installed both Linux versions. The reason was: Vice versa, that Windows did overwrite grub. The entire question was very complicated in the middle of the 90s. If you want to install, for example, Windows 95 together with Windows NT, you had to use the OS/2 boot manager or a similar tool, because Windows want the absolute dictatorship.

But in fact, what Greenhorn wrote should solve cman's problem. Okay?

Gunther
You have to know the facts before you can distort them.

mywan

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2012, 09:26:49 PM »
Yes, what Greenhorn give the best solution. Grub solved some earlier problems by a process called chain loading. Strictly speaking, Grub is not in itself the boot manager for windows, even when used to boot windows. Rather it is the default boot manager that then chain loads either a Linux, windows, or even another version of itself. This ability to chain load managers allows it to be used to create a cascaded menu of boot loader options. This approach was primarily aimed at loading alternative Linux kernels and directives, but was just as useful in choosing between loading windows or Linux. Windows, in particular, still requires the presents of the standard windows boot loader in order for Grub to chain load it. Linux goes about that part a bit different, with a bit more flexibility, and effectively needs no other hard coded boot loader like windows requires.

Gunther

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Re: Booting From Two Drives
« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2012, 09:55:36 PM »
Hi mywan,

it seems to me that you've a good knowledge about the grub internals. Your explanation is clear and we can say: cman should use Greenhorns proposal.

Gunther
You have to know the facts before you can distort them.