Dual boot question, education and/or help needed
 

Ok, here is my situation. I am about to format my drive, add another and move some things around. I currently use windows XP and I will be installing Windows 7 on my C: drive after formatting, I will not be splitting the drive into partitions. I intend to install Fedora (whatever the newest or best version is) on my D: drive. Now my question is this, what is the simplest and most effective way to have a screen come up at boot up and say something like "book from c: or D:" or something like "Boot from Windows 7 or Fedora" or maybe "choose what drive/system to boot from". I have read a ton and I am in overload now. I heard Fedora will write to the MBR and automatically produce a choice screen at boot up, but I also have heard about it GRUB and GRUB2. So I am starting to get confused now.

Thanks in advance.

Tony

1. install Windows
2. install Fedora

Assuming Fedora is smart (I don't use it, but it's a safe assumption), when you turn the computer on, grub will present you with the choice of Fedora or Windows.

Or should I put both OS on the same drive to keep them together? I normally keep installed software on one drive and all backups, pictures, MP3's and Rar'ed files on another, basically like a protected archive.

I posted my reply not seeing yours AlucardZero. That is what I thought, but wanted to make sure. Does it get more involved if you put WIN7 and Fedora on the same drive? I realize you have to setup separate partitions, but other than that ??? I am not in the mood for a pain in my butt on this. I used to reinstall ever 6-12 months just to keep in clean, but I am kinda outta that stage now, so simple is better. I have disliked MS and their OS since about the switch to Win95, but I just now finding time to try Linux stuff and I am excited quite frankly.

As long as they are on separate partitions, they can be on the same drive. If given a choice, make sure you install Grub to the MBR.

The disk layout is up to you. I think you should start referring to drives and partitions in the Linux way, not the Windows way, though. If I have two drives, sda and sdb, I can partition them into sda1, then sdb1 & sdb2 & sdb3, whatever. Referring by C or D doesn't make the distinction between partitions on different drives.

So sda would be the 1st physical drive and sdb would be the 2nd physical drive, correct? So sda1 would be the 1st partition of the 1st physical HDD and sda2 would be the 2nd partition on that same (#1) physical drive, is this also correct? Here is one for ya, what does "sd" stand for in the sda and sdb. I am using logic that "a" and "b" refer to the two different HDD.

I found an excellent tutorial after posting . . .

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/...ual_booting%29

By the way, thanks . . . I love learning . . :-)