I have a raid card that runs windows

If I put another hard drive directly into the motherboard to run linux will it dual boot properly.

do I have to configure the bootloader some how?

Is this possible?

Assuming there are drivers for your onbaord drive controler then it should. It's what I happen to be doing right "now"!

I have RHEL running on a few drives via a SATA raid card. I also have a couple drives running off the nVidia driven SATA controllers on my motherboard. In my bios I left the first HD in the boot order as my windoz drive and during my RH install I left the GRUB/boot loader settings at the default. This default then changed the MBR record to load GRUB and thus Linux.

Are you running Linux now and adding windoz or the other way around?

I have windows now and will be loading linux. Where are the onboard drive controllers found?

Cool then. IF your selected flavor of linux has a driver for your raid card then most of the current distros (that I've tried) will see see the MBR on your current Windows drive(s) and install GRUB accordingly. Just be sure that during your setup you aren't removing partitions on any drives unless you are sure it's not your windoz install.

At the top of this site is a link to a HCL or Hardware Compatability List. See if your stuff is listed there and you'll have a better idea as to how well you install should go. As for where you onboard drive controller's location I'm not sure as it is different on every MB. I can't image there are too many to choose from.

be very careful...I am dealing with this situation now and its a friggin nightmare.....read my post here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=414282

I can't get linux to boot no matter what I try..and now I can't get back into windows and the RAID array on my 2nd hard drive is broken....proceed with caution.

I tried to install Ubuntu and SimplyMEPIS....Maybe your distro won't have these issues.

If you happen to receive any useful help...please send it my way...It would be greatly appreciated.