Hi all

I wonder if anyone can advise me if this plan will work:

I have an 80 gig HD installed in the computer with Fedora 1 installed on it. I have another identical drive that is brand new and unformatted. My plan is this:
1. Install the new HD as drive C, i.e. first HD
2. Install the drive with Fedora on it as drive D second HD
3. Install XP on the new drive, first drive

Idea is to change the boot drive option in BIOS when the machine starts up. i.e. Select drive C, first drive, to boot windows, or select drive D, second drive to boot Fedora. This way the OS's are completely separate. Would this work as Fedora was installed when that drive was the only drive, would I also have to disable the drive that was not being used at the same time as I select the boot drive in BIOS?

umm.... why don't you just use a boot loader, like lilo or grub?

doesn't sound like you are trying to do anything unique.

Follow this process:
-Install drives into computer (in your desired fashion)
-Install XP FIRST (important- otherwise XP will overwrite your MBR and you won't be able to load linux)
-Install Linux
--- While installing linux select to install bootloader (make sure it installs on the HD with XP since you have that as your primary disk)

Hi NP

I already trashed one HD trying to get XP and Fedora on the same drive, it's now acting as a large paperwieght

I don't want to take the chance again, that's the idea of two separate 'Isolated' drives. All I'm wanting to know is will Fedora boot from the second drive, D when it was installed initially on C. It's easy enough to change the boot order in BIOS, I could also disable the drive that was not in use.

I've got a dual boot machine with Win98 and Linux on separate HDDs, a 6Gb with Win98 and a 40Gb with Red Hat 7.2. I tried the BIOS HDD selection a few times and it worked for me. But afterward I installed grub since it has fewer steps to take, plus its my son's PC.

ok, first question: Why did you trash the first HD? Why didn't you just reformat it with either XP or Linux?

secondly, I think you are going through too much effort trying to change the boot order everytime you load the machine (via the BIOS). Just load a simple boot loader and be done with it.

And to answer your simple question: Will Linux load from your second hard drive, when it was initially on the primary? Yes... if you reset the pins on the back of the hard drive to slave configuration, as opposed to master. and make sure your new HD (XP drive) the pins are set to a master configuration.

Now do realise that although you have two drives in your computer, Windows will not recognize the second drive due to the different file systems. So don't expect to go into Window Explorer and see a D drive.

Good Luck,
NPC

Hi Np

Thanks for that. I trashed the other HD somehow, don't know how, I'm new to Linux. The HD won't boot, format or anything else. I've tried using fdisk /mbr from a win 98 floppy no luck, it seemed to write to the disk but no change. I also tried some Third Party software off the Web. That recognised the drive but would not write to the partiion or the mbr. Things seem to have got worse with it as now when I try to boot XP from the CD, the system just hangs with the HD thrashing and the red light on. I noticed a similar thread also, no solution given. Anyway, it's only a 20 gig disk so it can stay holding down the paper. As it is, I'm using Fedora most of the time. I'll only need to get into XP if I want to run a program I don't have for Linux.

Cheers