Dual boot, dual drives. Where to put GRUB?
 

Hi all,

I'm kind of new to Linux and have a basic question about dual booting.
Currently, I have Windblows XP and SuSE 9.0 on seperate partitions on my single internal hard drive. Now that I know that I want to run SuSE all the time I would like to install it on a second internal drive. (I'll delete SuSE from the partition it exists on currently and rewrite the MBR using Windblows.)

Now. When I intall SuSE onto the second internal drive (which will be used all for itself) do I install GRUB on the MBR of the first hard drive, used by Windblows XP only, or to the second hard drive, used by SuSE only?????

Thanks much in advance.

Regards,
Richard Brock

Put it on the MBR of the first drive, since that's the one that your BIOS will try to boot from. GRUB will then give you the option of booting into Windows or SuSE.

So, if I have the following

/hda = Windblows XP
/hdb = SuSE

Then I should install GRUB on the MBR of /hda?

Thanks again.

Yes, exactly.

In your BIOS you can set the boot order (e.g. floppy, CD-ROM, hard drive 1, hard drive 2, etc.). You need GRUB installed into the MBR of the first hard drive in the boot order, which is almost always /dev/hda.

I would suggest for minimum impact, that you open your case and switch the drives. Then, you can install grub on the first drive, which will be Suse, and leave Windows basically alone. If Yast or whatever tool you use to get set up doesn't for some reason detect the Windows install, or it otherwise doesn't boot, you can edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to reflect where windows is and use the map function to fool Windows into thinking its first.

The advantage of this is that if you ever bork your Suse drive or install, you can merely plug the Windows drive back in to the first position (of course, your switching the jumper when you do this part, right?) and continue as if Suse wasn't already there. This method makes your Windows/Suse basicall autonomous, but working together. I've found this to be the best solution I could find for multi-drive, multi-OS booting. Good luck.

you don't need to do no cable switching. like what was already said you can change boot order in bios so if suse is in /dev/hdb you can just install to /boot or MBR which would be a good idea as windows wants to be on first drive. Although if you wish to have windows on second hdd you can have grub remap drive so windows think it's on first drive