2 harddisk, now what?
 

hi there,

i have 2 hard disk the first hard disk contains win xp and mandrake-10.1 and the 2nd hard disk contains none, so now im trying to install suse-9.2 in the 2nd hard disk as i do not want to delete the mandrake after customising it. if i install suse into the 2nd harddisk, do i install the bootloader(lilo or grub) again in the mbr? and do i need to setup another boot partition again to contain suse linux kernel? what about the swap partition?

i already have a swap partition. do i just enable it during installation or create a new one?

btw what happens if i delete suse linux in the 2nd harddrive? will the boot loader gets deleted too or will i still be able to select win xp or mandrake?

pls let me know of the steps.

thank you

Connect the new HD. Boot SuSE CD. You should make a new swap on the 2nd HD. Continue installing.

ok. now why cant i use the existing swap partition in suse?

any issues with allocation partitions in suse?

I don't know why you would need a second swap file, but it wouldn't hurt. The first swap file will probably be detected during installation.
There are a few methods you could use to boot from the second hard drive. One thing you could do is install the boot loader to the mbr of the second drive, and add an entry similar to the one for XP. This would result in an extra menu to go through however. Lilo would load in the grub (suse uses grub by default) boot loader.

Another option would be to modify the /etc/lilo.conf entry in Mandrake with the information needed to boot SuSE. You would need to remember to only modify the /etc/lilo.conf file in the Mandrake's /etc directory, and to run /sbin/lilo.conf there. You don't want a case of dueling lilos.

A third option would be to use XP's NTLDR to load up either XP, Mandrake or SuSE. There are several howtos on the web.
Here is one for lilo:
http://jaeger.morpheus.net/linux/ntldr.php

do i have to make another boot partition for suse?