Install Linux on 2nd hard drive

Tuvoc

Tuvoc

Tuvoc

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Joined
19 Dec 2002
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I have 2 physical hard drives. Vista is on the first. I'd like to install Ubuntu on the 2nd one, but I don't want the have the Linux boot loader on the 1st hard drive. In other words I can later delete Ubuntu easily and my first hard drive is totally unaffected. F8 when my machine first boots gets me into a BIOS boot menu where I can choose which drive to boot from - so I'd like 1st hard drive, Vista with it's own untouched boot stuff, or the 2nd drive with Linux and it's boot loader. During the Ubuntu install process, will I get the choice to put the boot loader on the 2nd hard drive without touching the first ?
 
Ubuntu will install the bootloader to the hard drive that's it's being installed onto.
 
Yup, it's installed on the same hard drive as ubuntu itself. I'm doing the exact thing myself. I've got Vista on my largest 750 GB drive and I keep Ubuntu on my smaller 320 GB drive. Works really well, GRUB automatically configures itself so that you get an option to boot vista or ubuntu on startup.
 
So - at a later time, what happens of you want to get rid of Linux and delete all partitions on drive 2 and reformat ? Will Vista then still boot ? Somehow I don't think so ?
 
Grub won't touch the Vista bootloader, and Grub will just disappear if you format the Ubuntu hard drive at a later date.
 
GRUB will erase the MBR. For this to work effectively you need to put the Linux drive as the first drive and swap them back when/if you remove Linux.
 
Hmm.. I'm still not clear what is happening. My machine in the BIOS boots from the first drive, and I get a boot menu asking me to chosse between Linux and Vista. So clearly, the first drive HAS been changed in some way (the MBR?) which is exactly what I DIDN'T want. So if I reformat the 2nd drive, when I boot up I'll still get a boot menu ? And if I choose Vista it will boot, but the Linux links will be dead obviously ?
 
Tuvoc said:
So if I reformat the 2nd drive, when I boot up I'll still get a boot menu ?
Click to expand...

No, you'll get an error as you've formated the drive with the boot info on.

As a test just to confirm, remove the 2nd drives cables and boot the machine with only the first drive in.
 
Yes, very nice, the 1st hard drive is back to how it was, boots directly into Vista again
I may try Linux again in a virtual machine. Last time, I downloaded an x64 version of MS Virtual PC (I run Vista x64) and the x64 Ubuntu, but when running the install in the virtual machine it said my system wasn't 64-bit... Seems only 32-bit can work in the virtual machine. Which is OK
 
Use the free VMWare Server or VirtualBox instead of Virtual PC.
 
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I'm confused about the VMWare versions - workstation and server etc. What is the exact one I need for my Vista X64 O/S ?
 
VMWare Server.

Tho you'll need to disable driver signing for it to work on x64 Vista.
 
Yes I discovered that... is that just for the initial installation or does that need to be permanent ?

VirtualBox doesn't allow the install of X64 Ubuntu either. Maybe VMWare does
 
It needs to be done on every boot of Vista.

But the new v2.0 won't need them to be disabled. It's currently in late beta, so should be out shortly.


I'm currently running two x64 Ubuntu VM's on x64 Vista :)
 
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