[SOLVED] Two drives of the same manufacturer -- which one contains Fedora?

Hi, I have two identical western digital harddrives. One contains Windows XP and the other Fedora. When starting up, I can choose which operating system to use.

Now I want to upgrade to Fedora 16 from a live CD. The installer asks me on which drive Fedora should be installed, but I can't tell them apart! How do I know the correct drive?

Use the liveCD to mount one of the drives.
or..
Run fdisk -l and check the partition types.

"parted -l" as root will list the filesystem as well partition id. Much better.

I have a policy which I absolutely follow. All disks on a machine must be different sizes. I regularly wipe partitions/disks, and would hate to hit the wrong one by accident.

Thanks for your quick response, but the problem is the following.
The installer asks which drive should be used for installing. The other will be mounted.
The only visible difference is the drive ID: "pci-0000:00:1f.1-scsi-0:0:0:0" for the first and "pci-0000:00:1f.1-scsi-0:0:1:0" for the second. How can I relate those IDs to /dev/hda (Windows XP) and /dev/hdb (Fedora)?

If you switch terminals what does 'ls -al /dev/disk/by-path/' return?

Thanks, that helped and I installed Fedora 16 from the live CD.

But if I boot the computer, all I get is a command prompt
>grub

How can I boot Windows or Fedora? PLEASE HELP.

Btw, below you will find the grub.conf file that I was using with the old Fedora

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-prep)
root (hd1,1)
vga=normal
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-prep ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet vga=normal
vga=normal
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-prep.img

When in doubt, pull power on drive.

Originally Posted by Lazy Fox Thanks, that helped and I installed Fedora 16 from the live CD.

Your original question being answered please do not forget to mark the thread solved (see "thread tools").

Originally Posted by Lazy Fox But if I boot the computer, all I get is a command prompt >grub

Noticing the "title Fedora Core (2.6.18" entry means you ran something like Fedora Core 6 which was obsolete in a way no dictionary can start to describe. Fedora 15 IIRC still came with GRUB (aka "grub-legacy") but Fedora 16 comes with kernel 3.3-x and AFAIK wants to boot GRUB2 from the MBR. As you need tEh oTHer oS to hog the primary disks MBR you have to install GRUB or GRUB2 in the secondary disks MBR or /boot partition.

All I had to do was to tell the bios to boot from the primary slave instead of from the primary master. Now the grub boot screen appears as it should.

Yeah, I really needed that Fedora upgrade

I've done it for you this time but marking your thread solved is done by using the "thread tools" menu "solved" item instead.