dual boot on two separate drives

[spondulick]

at the moment have xp on 160 gig drive and, ubuntu 11.04 0n 20 gig drive,.system boots to the linux side and i am given the option of booting from either and am ok with this,but would this still work if i wiped xp and replaced with win 7.(would i still get the option to boot from either) thanks.

[gregk]

Windows should recognise linux and ask you if you want to dual boot but I never done it this way. I only ever done it when I had xp installed first then I've loaded ubuntu second and it always worked. Have a look at ubuntu forums that's where you will find most info on how to install. Here's couple of links that might give you some sort of idea what to do https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1035999&page=23 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1035999&page=23)

[Egren71]

It depends on which disk is first as far as the bios is concerned. As the first disk will have the boot loader on. Although it is possible both could have the boot loader on but that is unusual.
If the Ubuntu disk is the first and has its boot loader "Grub" on the boot sector then you should be able to disconnect the Ubuntu disk, Load Windows7 then reconnect the Ubuntu Disk, Boot into Ubuntu and update the Grub configuration with the command "sudo update-grub" which should find windows 7.
This command assumes you are running grub 2 which you probably are if you are running Ubuntu 11.40 and you either update regularly or started with Ubuntu 10.04 or later. Earlier versions shipped with grub legacy by default and the command to update will be different.

Whenever you install an operating system it installs a boot loader to tell the bios where to find the operating system, windows doesn't play well with others and so always assumes it is the only operating system and doesn't recognise Ubuntu. So if it installs its boot loader on the first disk in the list, which it will do when you install or upgrade a windows operating system, and your Ubuntu boot loader is on that disk the Windows boot loader will overwrite the Ubuntu one and your Ubuntu will not be an option to boot into. You can recover from this scenario by using a live cd which i won't go into here.
Be aware that even if you install windows onto the second disk in the list windows will still put its boot loader on the firs disk.

What i would do is unplug the Windows Disc and see if you can boot into Ubuntu. Then plug it back in and see if you can boot into Windows and Ubuntu.
Then unplug the Ubuntu Disc and see if you can boot into Windows. Then plug it back in and see if you can boot into Windows and Ubuntu.
If you can boot in all scenarios then the odds are that each disk has its own boot loader and you should be ok doing what i suggested at the top of this post i.e. disconnect the Ubuntu disk, Load Windows7 then reconnect the Ubuntu Disk, Boot into Ubuntu and update the Grub configuration with the command "sudo update-grub" which should find windows 7.

Of course your system may be different in some way and it may all go horribly wrong so what ever you choose to do i suggest you back up anything you don't want to or can't afford to loose before you start.

[spondulick]

yeah had a look i think from what iv'e been reading my best bet will be to wipe linux drive only 20 gig,then wipe 160 gig drive load windows 7.then load ubuntu back onto 20 gig drive then linux system should recognise other hard drive and i will be able to dual boot.sounds a long winded approach but for a guy thats new to linux probrably the best idea.

[Egren71]

If you are going to do that, and you shouldn't need to, then i would still suggest you disconnect the drive you are not loading the OS onto while you load the other OS. That way you will still be able to boot at least one OS should one hard drive fail. If you don't disconnect the drive then you should at least make the drive you are installing to OS onto the first drive in the list as far as the bios is concerned, assuming you have sata drives and a bios that is capable of it, for the same reason.

[gregk]

I'm not saying Engren's way is wrong in any way - and I'm not an expert but personaly I found it easier to do it as below.
I would not disconect any hard drives at least not when win 7 is installed before ubuntu as if you do then ubuntu will not recognise dual boot and the only way to boot would be thru Bios which is a little long winded on some Pc's. Once everything is installed and working you can go and change which OS to boot first in ubuntu startup option. I think it's admin then system setup and startup options [on older linux to do this you had to use terminal and change settings in grub] If for some rezone you can not boot any of the OS you can repair windows using 'fixboot' or 'fixmbr' option using win cd and windows should start. This is true to win xp but still should work in win 7. Done it few times myself and it does work.

[Egren71]

* Gregk is partly right and the joy of Linux is that there is no out and out correct way of doing things, just whatever works for you.
However two things to note are
one, spondulick says in his post that he is using Ubuntu 11.04 which is the latest version so getting Ubuntu to recognise Windows only needs the command "sudo update-grub" from the linux terminal command prompt. No need to mess around with bios.
and two the reason i suggested two independent installs was so that if a problem occurs with a drive at some time you don't looses both Operating Systems. Also it looks as though spondulick is experimenting with Linux and this solution gives him the best chances of updating with the fewest problems in the future.
But the best solution is whatever suits you.
Also i thought that 'fixboot' or 'fixmbr' only fixes the Windows boot and as a result he would loose the Ubuntu option, but i could be wrong.

[gregk]

Yeah you are correct fixboot and fixmbr will only fix win instalation.[ubuntu is quicker to install then win] I only suggested install win OS first then linux second becouse of ease of instalation. Without having to mess about to much in terminal. As I said I'm not an expert and infact just been only messing around with ubuntu and this was easiest way to get both installs working correctly.In a past I tried OS's on 2 separate drives, installed 1 OS with other disconnected and it would not work with grub update and could only be controlled by bios boot option. Maybe I was doing something wrong it just kept failing to update Grub.

[Egren71]

I am not an expert either, i suspect that i may have just been messing around with Ubuntu slightly longer.
I suspect that the version of Ubuntu you tried was probably older than version 10.04. It was around about that version that Grub2 became the default Ubuntu boot loader. Although for reasons that i don't know Grub became Grub legacy and Grub2 became Grub which is a little confusing.
In some ways Grub2 is easier to use than Grub and one of the ways that it is easier is that if you use the command i gave earlier, then Grub2 will find any other OS installed and put an entry for it in the boot loader.
I don't blame you for not wanting to use the terminal, i also avoid it as much as possible
I use this setup on my system, two operating systems on two hard drives and use the method i suggested earlier to install them, because i am forever messing with the set up and it gives me least problems when i mess something up.
I agree that installing windows first is a good idea as Ubuntu will recognize the windows install but windows won't recognize Ubuntu unless something has changed in windows7.
But also as i said earlier with Linux it is whatever is good for you.

[gregk]

Hmmm..... Just out of cuorosity I've downloaded and installed ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop and must say that I don't like the the way it looks everything is so difficult to find. I recone 10.04 or even an older distro is so much easier to navigate and work with. So much so that I will revert back. I didn't realized ubuntu has changed that much with latest edition. How do you find it?
Thinking about your post you are propably right about older vertion of grub on my setup as altought I run 10.04lts on my desktop I think it might of been updated from an earlier distro but honestly I can't remember as it's been a while since I've done it.

[Egren71]

I agree, fortunately you can get back to the old interface by logging out then click on your user name to log back in but before you type in your password, at the bottom of the screen there are three drop down (up?) menus. On the right hand most menu choose Ubuntu Classic instead of Ubuntu, then type in your password and log back on and you should get back to the old interface.

[spondulick]

update...i did load win seven after wiping xp,and the outcome was that windows failed to recognise linux drive,changed boot sequence to boot from linux the boot menu on start up was obviously showing the old xp as an option,but linux said drive not recognised so i loaded 11.04 over 11.04 then win seven was shown and i can dual boot again.i personally was impressed with system just a bit of tweaking and seems very stable also when surfing the net dont seem to get half as many pop ups.as the pc i am using has an old gigabyte board with a amd athlon 2400 cpu i am going to remove win seven from the 160 gig drive to hopefully allow me to replace with three more linux systems....that will then be a total of four on one pc,can you guys give me any ideas as to which linux systems would be best for this setup.

[Egren71]

As always with Linux which one to use is always dependent on what you want to use it for. If you are just experimenting you could just go for the popular ones DistroWatch here (http://distrowatch.com/) has a list of the most downloaded. Or elsewhere on Digital Kaos, here (http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/f103/linux-one-best-173919/), is a which is best thread which seem to be focused on fast and small. Alternatively most Linuxes are based on other distro's so you could go for ones that are independent of each other. So for example Ubuntu is based on Debian and many others are based on Ubuntu but openSUSE is not based on any other and as far as i know has nothing based on it so maybe try that. Fedora Is based on Red Hat but since i think Red Hat is not free maybe try Fedora unless you are trying to learn it to improve your employment chances in which case CentOS in more similar to Red Hat and Red Hat is geared towards Enterprise Servers in a business.
Slackware, Gentoo and FreeBSD are all not based on any other distro so maybe try one of them.
Or alternatively try on of the specialised distress like FreeNas which turns your PC into a NAS server, or Ubuntu Studio which is a music production distribution. There are also version for data recovery on damaged disks but i can't remember the name of that one at present.
As i said at the beginning it depends what you want it for. What i suggest is have a read through all the versions on the DistroWatch web page to see what they are designed for and choose some that suit your purposes.
Sorry for the vague answers but Linux tends not to have a one version is best attitude.