I am a novice at Linux. I have Windows XP running on an AMD64 and I bought a second hard drive (80GB Maxtor ATA/EIDE) to install Linux (Red Hat Enterprise 3) on it. Could somebody please tell me if the following steps are correct to proceed with the installation?:

1) Mount the new HD (say HD2)
2) Change the BIOS so as to set HD2 as the primary hard drive (first place from where to boot after CD drive and floppy-disk drive) and the HD1 (my actual HD) as the secondary hard drive.
3) Install the GRUB boot loader and Linux on HD2, i.e. on /dev/hda
4) Set Windows as the default OS by choosing /dev/hdb as the default OS and set Linux as the alternative OS by adding /dev/hda to the boot loader configuration.


What I don't know is whether the BIOS will detect HD2 so that I can proceed with step 2) above. Any help here is welcome.

I would also appreciate if somebody can raise my attention regarding any flaw in the sequence of steps I listed above.

Is it safe to unplug HD1 to avoid ruining my actual OS and hard drive?

Thank you all for the consideration of my matter.

Marcelo

Redhat has a very easy installer. Don't worry about a thing. Simply put your new drive (for linux) in the computer as the Primary Slave, let's call it "/dev/hdb", for the sake of linux. Have redhat install on /dev/hdb and let it make any partitions for you that you need. When it asks you about grub, you'll want to install that on /dev/hda and you'll have the option to make windows the default at that time. This will all become clear when running the installer.

You could also read up on using the windows boot loader to boot into linux if you don't want to chance any changes on your windows drive, but it takes some reading. For example, /boot (where grub and the kernel live) will be on /dev/hdb. If you were to repartition /dev/hdb, /boot might be lost and therefore when grub went to load it wouldn't be able to find itself (because one part would be living on /dev/hda, but another on /dev/hdb), and thus you wouldn't be able to boot windows until grub was reinstalled or you ran fixmbr from the windows recovery console.

Your BEST bet is to defrag your windows drive with PerfectDisk (tm) (on download.com) and then use qtparted ($ sudo qtparted) within knoppix to resize your windows partition ever so slightly and make a small (50mb or so) /boot on /dev/hda (you may need to manually select that during the RedHat install process instead of using the fully automatic partitioner). That way grub could live on /dev/hda and you would be free reformat /dev/hdb as many times as you wanted without ever effecting your ability to boot into windows (you would leave your windows disk as Primary Master).

You shouldn't need to reconfigure the BIOS - it will want to boot from the Primary Master.

If you need hard-core step-by-step instrutions, just let me know and I'll spell it out for you. I don't know how much of that you'll understand.

Thank you for your prompt answer. I don't understand everything but very much of what you explained to me. I have to read about using qtparted [ ($ sudo qtparted) within knoppix] to resize my windows partition. Don't waste any other minute of your time on this before I complete my homework.
Thanks,

No problem, I can just barely believe that a year ago I registered here and now I'm actually able to help someone instead of needing help. It's the least I can do to start the subsidation of this festering guilt-trip from having been on the sidelines for so long and not out helping enough in the community.