Okay, first I searched for 20 minutes with no luck, sorry if it's been asked before.

I want to know if I can install Windows 2000 on my second hard drive and Gentoo Linux on the first. I don't have my Gentoo CD yet so I thought I may as well install Windows (for my games ) first until my Gentoo comes in the mail - it has to be installed first anyway. Now I've dual-booted on one hard drive before, but when I got to selecting a partition for installing Windows on my second (slave) HD, it complained that it needed a Windows-compatible partion on the master drive. I thought it was maybe so it could reach the MBR on the master (which I can overwrite later with LILO) so I made a partition on the first. But then it fails and says the disk may be damaged (it works fine btw ).

Am I missing something? Is there a trick or does Windows have to be on my first drive? Here's what I want to do:

/dev/hda (master) Maxtor 60 gig w/ 8mb cache
-----------------------------------------------------------
hda1 - /boot
hda2 - /swap
hda3 - /
hda4 - /home

/dev/hdb (slave) Maxtor 40 gig w/ 4mb cache
------------------------------------------------------------
NTFS partition w/ Windows 2000
FAT32 partition (to transfer files between Win. and Lin.)

Thanks in advance.

I have a tip.

Make the windows2000 Hard Disk Drive the primary and install win2k.
When you have finished installing, make the win2k HDD the secondary (slave) and the Linux HDD the primary (master).
Boot Linux and configure your bootloader (GRUB or Lilo) for dual booting.

Okay, I did as you said Mathieu and it worked well. I installed Windows XP on the first drive and that worked fine, then flipped the drives and installed Red Hat 8 (I hate Red Hat, I just wanted something to play with because Gentoo is taking their sweet time shipping 1.4). I installed Lilo during the install and added /dev/hdb1 for Windows. Upon re-boot Red Hat boots fine, but if I try XP, all I get is "Loading Windows" with a blinking cursor under it, and it does nothing. I'm probably forgetting something simple - any ideas? Here's my lilo.conf file:

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
read-only
append="hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

other=/dev/hdb1
optional
label=dos

You will need to re-map your drives.

Take a look at these two threads
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=25583
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=28564

I've always found that Windows wants to be in the Primary drive slot...tried several combinations, and the only way I've had it work consistently was with Windows as Primary and Linux as Slave.

Is there a particular reason you want Linux as primary?

hi there!

check out my post, I think it's something good for ya

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=80753

hope this helps!