Greetings to all:

Even though I've been using Linux for a couple of years I still consider myself a rookie. Thus my post to this forum.

I'm currently running a dual boot with Linux Mint and Win 7 on separate internal drives on an old Optiplex 755. The Win drive is dying so I figure this is a good time to abandon Windows completely. Been planning this for a while anyway.

I'm going to install a new drive and load Ubuntu Studio on it. My question is, what do I need to do to have a choice of which drive to boot on startup? I know I can hit F12 on power-up and choose the drive from there but I'm thinking there's probably a better way.

I should probably mention that right now I have something installed on Win 7 called EasyBCD that presents a menu on startup which allows me to choose between Win and Linux. Right now the Win drive is the primary drive (sda).

I've searched for a solution but have yet to find one. The posts I have found typically deal with booting off a USB drive or dual booting Linux/Win.

Thanks.

when you install linux, it will install a boot loader for you. This will detect all the bootable systems and will display a menu during boot (to be able to select). This boot loader is called grub.

Thank you. That's pretty much what I thought would happen but I wasn't sure.

That means that in your bios setup, sda is designated as your boot device and your system bios will look there for boot code on that drive to boot the system. As pan64 noted you should be fine if you install ubuntu on your new sda drive as it will install the linux bootloader, grub, there on sda and automatically detect your Mint installation on sdb and create a boot entry for it. After installation of ubuntu studio when you boot, grub will present you with a boot selection screen which will give you the option to boot into either ubuntu studio or Mint.

Thanks Kilgore. And a big "howdy" to a fellow Vonnegut fan.