I thought this was gonna be easy -- oops!

I have XP running on 1 SATA drive and I added a 2nd 500GB SATA as storage. I decided I wanted to install Fedora Core 8 on the 2nd SATA (tired of running Linux in VM's)

To install I disconnected the XP drive and installed FC8 on the 2nd SATA.

What is the best way to hook up both drive and get prompted which drive to boot to?? PLEASE step by step instructions would be a huge help!

Right now it boots back into Windows (as I expected) - I put GRUB on FC8 install since I figure I was going to need it eventually...

Thanks so much!!

I don't know if this is possible with SATA drives (I have one, but I still boot from IDE), but let's hope there's an analog:

With IDE controllers (and IDE drives) you can change which drive is looked at first, in the boot priority, by moving all of the jumpers to CS (Cable Select) and then making sure the drive you want to boot from is plugged in to the IDE0 channel (as opposed to the IDE1 channel). As it were, there are - basically - four IDE channels: IDE0, IDE0-1, IDE1 and IDE1-1. As long as a drive with a bootable image exists on the IDE0 or IDE0-1 channels, you'll boot from it.

So, what my thinking is, if SATA has "channels" too, put the 500GB, Fedora Core 8 drive on the first SATA channel, and then edit the Grub menu to your heart's content.

If you are going to do it that way you can choose which drive to boot by going into your BIOS and changing the order of the drives. Some systems have a "Press F8 to select boot device" which might also be an option.

Otherwise you will need to modify (or install a 3rd party) one of your bootloaders and keep that drive as the main boot drive. If you reinstall FC8 on the drive you have it installed on it *should* pickup your windows install on your other drive and set it all up for you during the installation process.

Good luck!

Cool

i do what your doing, but i dont do it with 2 satas i do it with one and the other hard drive came with the computer, i have a dell 4600. what i do is hit f12 which is my boot menu, i go to that and it asks me which drive to boot from. i have ubuntu on my master drive and Xp on my slave drive, so basically go to your boot menu and so long as both drives are hooked up correctly and are recognized by your system they should appear, as two drives master and slave and you just choose which one you would like to boot from.