Install Red Hat linux on separate disk
 

Hi, I'm planing to instal Red Hat Linux 8.0 on separat disk on my computer.
I'm beginer and never used linux before. I have one disk Maxtor 40 GB on which Win Xp is installed, and another disk (Maxtor 15 GB) on which I plan to install Red Hat linux. My plan is to remove disk with Windows XP from computer, connect other disk as primary, install Red Hat linux and then return first disk with windows as primary master and second disk with linux as primary slave. Now problem is how to make choice to boot between these two OS. I don't want to use GRUB because I'll need to place it on the disk with windows and I heard this will screw things after I try to remove linux. So I want to use windows loader to load linux. Is that possible?
How can I achive this?
Thanks for help

It is possible. When swapping disks you will need to modify the /etc/grub.conf and /etc/fstab files after the windows disk is reinstalled. If you select expert mode when install RH and use the instructions below then removing the windows disk is not required. BTW RH does not provide any support or updates anymore for its RHL versions.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/

To setup windows for booting linux:
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

Thank for reply, could you be more specific with this. How to configure /etc/grub.conf and /etc/fstab files

I have very valuable files on windows disk and I'm afraid I'll increase risk of loosing that files (movies ... 20 GB in total) and because of that I decide to remove windows disk while installing linux.
I thought it would be sufficient to just edit boot.ini on windows disk after reinstalling it back in my computer.
Can you help?

BTW I have the following configuartion:

AMD Duron 750 MHZ
MB Asus A7s-vm
Hard disk 15 GB (for linux)
RAM 256 MB
What distro of linux would you recommend me?

Thanks!

another option would be to have the bootloader on a floppy disk ( a bit messy I know)
or to control the boot sequence through your BIOS.

I have GRUB contolling my WinXP Pro and Mandrake 10 installs and have not had any problems. Go on...don't be shy ;-)

Not sure about the Win boot.ini - perhaps someone else can help?

You mean not to remove disk with windows while installing linux. Ok, in that case I'll need to make a large backup.

And what about my hardware configuration ? What would you recommend?