dual booting 2harddrives

d_lake · 05-29-2003, 02:17 PM

Hey guys, well i have 2 harddrives now 40GB and 80GB. I have windows xp on the master=40GB and i have la couple of distros of linux on the 80GB slave.
I want to know how do i boot linux from the first drive, and i have looked at my bios and it doesnt support booting from two hds, i think....its a dell demension 8200 if that helps.

Crashed_Again · 05-29-2003, 02:29 PM

Did you install LILO?

d_lake · 05-29-2003, 03:14 PM

yes i did on the mbr, but thats on the second drive

Crashed_Again · 05-29-2003, 03:19 PM

Oh I see. So you can't boot from the second hard drive therefore its not finding LILO. Well, you could install LILO on the first hard drive. You sure you can't get the bios to boot from the second hard drive?

Korff · 05-29-2003, 04:35 PM

Unless you don't wanna do this, I think that swapping the drives' master-slave status (do this by swapping their positions on the IDE cable and setting your jumpers) would let you boot from the second drive, but then unless your bootloader could boot from the first drive, you still would have the same problem.

d_lake · 05-29-2003, 08:23 PM

Well loading lilo is kinda hard if only windows is on the first drive. I have thought
about changing the harddrives around, would that conflict with anything on windows or linux.

Crashed_Again · 05-29-2003, 08:27 PM

I don't think so. It just changes the boot sequence thats all.

d_lake · 05-31-2003, 12:09 PM

well i swaped the drives and that didnt work, yes i changed the 40gig to slave and the other master. I can boot linux on the second one till it tries to mount root filesystem, but windows wont boot at all. So what should i do now?

Electboy · 05-31-2003, 02:00 PM

assume your slave drive is hdb
1. Boot Linux from Linux boot floopy diskette (FD)
2. Login as root.
3 Creat linux.lnx in root's home directory :
dd if=/dev/hdb1/ of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1
4. Insert DOS FD, copy boot.lnx : mcopy boot.lnx a:
5. Run Windows, copy boot.lnx to C:\ from FD,
6. Remove "System, Hidden" Attribute of boot.ini .
7. Edit boot.ini add a line : "C:\boot.lnx". Save
8.Reboot

Hope it helps u. Thanks

d_lake · 05-31-2003, 04:09 PM

So your assuming that my slave(hdb) is linux and hda is windows?
Can you please tell me what all this does (explain), because i am kinda a newb

Electboy · 06-02-2003, 11:13 AM

When start from Linux boot diskette, u can see the name of HD for Windows :hda, and for Linux : hdb. Do it, u will see.

Thanks

Electboy · 06-02-2003, 12:10 PM

Hda : Quantum Fireballtct20 10, ATA Disk drive. Here is mine

Edward78 · 06-02-2003, 01:54 PM

If you can ever get to linux, put lilo on the MBR of the first drive. Or look for a bootloader to put on the first drive. There is a free one out there called Gag, but I have no idea where to find it. If you have a boot disk that would help.