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[DPRG] Fwd: OT - Linux Question
Subject: [DPRG] Fwd: OT - Linux Question
From: Chuck McManis
cmcmanis at mcmanis.com
Date: Sun Apr 27 15:15:36 CDT 2008
At 09:07 AM 4/27/2008, you wrote:
>Oops, I hit "send" accidentally.
>
>
>I'd like to configure my PC to dual-boot with either Ubuntu Linux or
>Windows. I set a separate partition on the primary drive before I
>installed Windows XP.
I guess the question is what you're trying to achieve with the dual
boot setup. I've found that drives are so cheap these days that I can
set up a machine with a removable drive carrier that lets me add in
an alternative operating system.
What I've found is that most BIOSes try to boot from drive 0. Further
when they are probing they probe channel A first then channel B. So
on machines with older motherboards you can set up the following:
IDE A - Master Optical Drive (I've got a Plextor DVD drive here)
IDE A - Slave - Connect the Removable Drive here
IDE B - Master Hard drive with your "main" OS goes here.
IDE B - Slave - Hard drive with "user" data goes here (can also use USB drive)
The BIOS will probe this when there is no removable drive installed
and boot from the IDE-B master (first hard drive found). But if you
install a hard drive it will be preferentially booted.
I used this setup on my kids computers for a long time where I
installed Windows and all their games on the other drive then
installed FreeBSD on an installable drive and imaged the other drive
to the FreeBSD drive with dd(1). Then any complaints about
"configuration problem" or "doesn't boot" and I'd plug in my FreeBSD
drive, re-image the other hard drive and reboot, voila no more
problems (until something else screwed it up) On my Linux desktop I
use that same setup to boot into XP on those occasions when I want
XP to run on that machine.
I found this also works with SATA drives but you need to find out
what order the BIOS preferentially puts things into (which interface
does it consider disk 0, disk 1, etc.)
The advent of BIOS' that will boot from USB attached drives makes
this easier still.
--Chuck
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