Fedora 14/Windows 7 on two separate drives.
 

Hi all

Can anyone tell me whether it is possible to run Fedora 14 on hard drive SDA (1st drive in computer - 1 terabyte Western Digital) and also run Windows 7 on drive SDB (2nd drive in computer - 1 terabyte Hitachi)?

I have been able to run both Windows and Fedora (Fedora installed last) on SDA, but all my attempts to have the two OSs running on different drives have failed. Am I attempting the impossible or can it be done? I´m not particularly concerned which OS goes on which drive, but Fedora grub doesn´t seem to be able to pick up WIN7 when it is on drive SDB.

Any advice would be appreciated.

brpy1

Yes its possible. Fedora should be able to automatically set up GRUB to point windows at /dev/sdb; if not then you can modify the grub config file and do it manually.

all this is discussed in the fedora docs
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/index.html
http://www.fedoraforum.org/
and should be in the wiki too
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Project_Wiki

you might want to do a bit of research there are many different ways to do what you want

and the current win7 is "supposed to" be able to boot from the second drive .

My system has sata drives, I installed windows on 1 drive first, then disconnected and put the other drive in installed debian.
Then I reconnected selected my debian drive to boot up.

Ran "sudo os-prober", which is a tool in debian-based systems
Then "sudo update-grub".
Since both drives have their own mbr I'm able to boot either disk when the other is not present.

Physically opining up the computer and pulling plugs is not all that good way of doing it

grub can be installed on any partition of any disk .There is no need to physically remove a drive to install to the second one


there are different ways to dual boot all have good and bad points

I apologize if my post was misleading, but when I installed Debian I hadn't fully committed to installing to the original drive, so I was testing it, as I am still new to linux.

After I tested and liked the results, I wanted the other drive connected.
So I did the above commands
Right now it's still operational.

Soon I will move that to the other drive, but that's another topic.

Like I said I apologize.
Btw: i didn't know that I could just disable my sata drives.

Thank you all for your informative responses. As long as I know it can be done, I'll find a way to do it. As John VV point out, I should have done a bit more research before asking what must seem to be a silly question.

Again, thank you all.

brpy1

not silly .Most people have NEVER installed one OS let alone two or more on one computer .It can be a bit daunting .

to counter the "overwhelmingness " of it . put some things down on paper
you will find a BUNCH of tutorials for windows xp and linux
with windows 7 they are 100% usless -- do not bother even to read "how to's for XP

you can use bcd to boot linux and windows7
or you can use grub to boot both

-- normal every day--
windows 7 FIRST and ONLY -- ONLY -- install on the first drive
install fedora on the second drive and but grub on the second drive
change the boot order in the bios

thee are other ways and combinations of them
find one that works for you .

Solved - Win7 and fedora 14 are happily co-existing on drives sda and sdb respectively, with Grub installed on sda. Lesson learnt - never attempt to install Win7 on any drive other than drive 0.

Thanks to all and particularly John VV for very helpful advice.

brpy1