multiple OS's on two HDs ?
 

Newbie for about 6 months.
I have a pentium III 20GB system with Windows98SE and Mandrake 10.0 also on it. It dual boots successfully (bootloader-I think is LILO-I just 'point & click installed' using the Mandrake 4 CD set upon the main Mandrake install).

Just got a second HD (120 GB) and trying to find out:
Can I install another distro (eg mandrake 10.1) on the new HD..will this knacker up the system?

That is, will I be able to -somehow-advice much appreciated here-be able to have a system with a final bootloader allowing choice of all 3 OS's?
-And if so-HOW?

(Been hunting around for advice here and done some 'rtfm-ing' but cannot seem to get specific info on this quandry.)

Why would it. I run three OS on two hd's and it's hardly different than running OS off one hard drive...

I have never used Mandrake...but I believe Mandy 10.0 and 10.1 wouldn't have much difference. Why not try something else??? May be Ubuntu or Fedora for that matter...

Just a suggestion :D

Tux,

i wopuld suggest fc3

It certainly could cause you problems.
Typically the GUI installers aren't too smart about finding other *nix installs. They generally seem to find Windows variants o.k.
So, if you allow the new distro to install into the MBR of the primary hard disk (probably the default), you'll generally find you have access to your new install, and Windows.
Only.
You would then need to add an entry for the "lost" distro. Hint - back up your current lilo conf file before you start; although it should be safe, and not too hard to find.

I prefer to not allow any boot-loader installation once I have a working environment. Do the install (minus boot-loader), and simply add an entry for the new distro to your current conf file.
Less likely to get nasty surprises.

Above advice offered without direct Mandrake knowledge.

You can install and boot up to 9 operating systems with GAG. All you need to do is install the bootloaders into the superblock or root partition of each distro you install. GAG will manage them for you. I can install and uninstall distros to my hearts content with basically NO bootloader configurations. Makes life very easy and fun. Of course, you need to partition your hard drives to accomodate the various distros. All you need is a 1 gig partition for swap and 5 gig partitions for operating systems.

http://gag.sourceforge.net/

Certainly might be worth a look - thanks.

Thanks all of you for your help here-your replies are spot on for me to go and work on now.

Yes -point taken with regards I should be more adventurous with the Linux distro's...I am now considering installing Quantian (scientific distro)..on the second HD.
I was going to use the latest Mandrake just because of the very easy install I experienced with the 10.0 version where I installed alot of uncommon maths/science stuff from source on the 10.0 OS -with alot of learning and pain-hence my unwillingness to get rid of that.

I'll check out the GAG stuff before trying 'altering the config file'.

Thanks again.