Dual Booting with 2 hard drives
 

Question:

I have 1 Hard drive...
I put it into a machine and install linux on it.

I get a second hard drive.. I want to install windows on it and dual boot it the PC..

Now the boot loader (GRUB i imagine) is on the linux drive...

1. Does this work?
2. Does GRUB automatically pick up the windows hard drive and if not how do i add it?

I used the same scenario as yours to install Linux. One drive Win 2K and the other drive Linux. However I installed 2K first and linux second and Lilo made a boot list to pick from..Linux-failsafe-Windows. No problems there. It will boot either o/s without incident.

However I made a mistake and but Lilo on the MBR on hd0 or the first hard drive ( the w2k drive). If/when I uninstall Linux I think I'm going to loose my 2k or will need to repair the boot partition.

Incidentally removing Linux seems likely scenario considering just upgrading video drivers seems a big pain in the ass which I can't seem to get any real helpful advice.

So if your going to put linux on your rig, in the setup menu when it asks for the placement of the lilo boot partition put it on the first partition of the drive containing linux. Then install Windows on the other drive (master drive scenario works better). Go into the boot.ini in the Windows o/s and edit it to reflect the boot partition of linux, and put a 10 sec timer on it. That way you can play with linux and format the hard drive with it with out loosing your windows boot partition.

yeah thats exactly wht i did. I installed windows XP professional on my main hard drive and installed SUSE 9 on the other one i had. no problems at all.

I have both XP and Fedora Core 1 on the same drive... I'm in a position where it'll be hard to get my hands on a new hdd, (no money, being a student and all). I used GRUB for bootloading without a hitch.... and if you're worried about losing Windows' boot loader if you get rid of linux, then as long as you have a bootable Windows XP cd, or other suitable boot disk, you'll be able to get into windows and repair the boot sector easily.