On Saturday 20 March 2004 3:56 am, Ralph Sanford wrote:
On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 18:24, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Q: What happens if you have 2 physical hard drives? I'd put XP on one and SuSE on the other, but where does XP wind up? I will be putting up a new machine soon, and would like some advice as to how to do this. (I don't really want XP, but I'm afraid I'm stuck with it. I know that some of my old Windows stuff won't work anymore, and I'll probably have to find a Linux workaround.)
--doug
Hi Doug,
It may not be necessary but I believe it is the simplest and easiest to put any Windows OS on the first hard drive and the real OS on the second drive. Windows will always install without any problems if it is on the first drive, and by giving the whole drive to Windows I have never had Windows mess with or corrupt the real OS's on a separate second drive.
There are also no problems with the windows definition of the partition table disagreeing with the Linux determination of the partition table. You can partition the windows drive, if desired, and keep windows data on a fat32 partition for easy access by Linux and separate backup of the windows data.
I have never seen this happen
I have also found that when I set up a dual boot computer this way for people who are new to Linux, then Windows OS is on drive C where they expect to find it. And where their semi-computer literate friends expect to find it, so when they tinker and screw things up all that is affected is windows.
I don't think that putting windows on C: makes Linux any safer from tinkerers and screwers!
Keeping the OS's separate in each drive also make administration simple in that when windows had become corrupted you can quite freely format the entire windows hard drive and re-install. Not that administration of partitions is difficult, but when a friend who is a little uncertain is phoning for help with formating a disk, there is a certain comfort to say to disconnect the cable from the second disk before any partition management and the Linux disk will not be affected.
Unless you are doing something special, your linux setup still depends on the 1st HD to boot, in one way or another. So the comfort I wold find from this is far from complete. As a matter of interest, how do you arrange the booting for this setup? Vince