dual boot windows xp with fedora 7 on two separate drives

[biruru]

Hi, i have two hard drives, one is sata and other is ide. I already have windows xp install on the sata drive and want to install fedora 7 on the ide drive. How can i setup the grub and dual boot in order to make it work properly? Do i install the grub in the sata drive or the ide drive? and how to make the windows boot as default? thanks

[ramasees]

as far as i know you cant duel boot two different drives with grub but i may be wrong i have more or less the same and i use the bios to switch drives

[Wangberg]

i have a similar setup where i have my primary master drive with XP installed and secondary master with linux installed. My bios is set to boot the secondary one which contains GRUB. in response to rmasees, it can be done. here is a copy of my grub.conf so you may be able to tweak it up a little:


# 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 (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sdb
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.21-1.3228.fc7)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3228.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.21-1.3228.fc7.img
title Fedora (2.6.21-1.3194.fc7)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
title Micro$oft Windows XP
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1


also, check out this link for more info on configuring GRUB:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/s1-custom-kernel-bootloader.html

[ramasees]

wow thanks Wangberg ill give it a go myself

[ramasees]

works a treat thanks thats made my day

[biruru]

@Wangberg, so your system is setup to boot fedora by default? So as long as i set up to boot from the linux drive that contain the grub, then it will be fine?

[Wangberg]

biruru: yes...always boot linux as default, and if using one drive, always install linux second, as windows will rewrite the MBR (master boot record) and delete GRUB.

make sure your grub file has XP mapped correctly (ie hd0, hd1, hd2 etc etc.) to however your hardware is configured and your system will be able to boot both fedora and windows. that link i posted should explain it.

i keep XP on another drive, so when i do Fedora updates or whatnot, it can't hurt windows (in theory). Another precaution i take is when i reinstall or do something heavy in linux, i'll unplug the power to my XP drive, so nothing can really happen to it.

[Wangberg]

works a treat thanks thats made my day

right on, mate! :)

[Peter_APIIT]

I also facing hte same problem where i have one SATA(Windows) and another IDE(LInux) where the grub bootloader is corrupted the MBR of SATA(Windows). The windows hard disk cannot boot anymore.


I don't want to switch the devices in the BIOS.

Thanks.

[Jongi]

Am i missing something here. FC7 will setup grub to have both Windows and FC7 as options when it installs. If you are installing FC7 the option will be there. It will just show Windows as Other.

[Anniedog]

Not really sure if this is the right place to post but it seems relevant to my question or rather will I be correct?
I have set up sata drive with XP and FC6. Everything is fine but I wish to add an IDE hard drive from the machine below which contains my boot to FC6 and FC7 on it.(restoring this machine to just XP)Togeher with a large amount of data partitions. FC7 will not run on my ASROCK machine but I wish to keep this just in case a fix is found.
If I install this dive with the bios to boot only from the sata drive Will this be OK? I do not wish the iDE boot to get involved as FC7 will really blow things apart.

[gwon]

Am i missing something here. FC7 will setup grub to have both Windows and FC7 as options when it installs. If you are installing FC7 the option will be there. It will just show Windows as Other.

Not if, as the OP mentioned, you are using two different physical disks.

I just came in here to ask the same question. Thanks Wangberg.

[Anniedog]

Not really sure if this is the right place to post but it seems relevant to my question or rather will I be correct?
I have set up sata drive with XP and FC6. Everything is fine but I wish to add an IDE hard drive from the machine below which contains my boot to FC6 and FC7 on it.(restoring this machine to just XP)Togeher with a large amount of data partitions. FC7 will not run on my ASROCK machine but I wish to keep this just in case a fix is found.
If I install this dive with the bios to boot only from the sata drive Will this be OK? I do not wish the iDE boot to get involved as FC7 will really blow things apart.


Just posting back to say yep it worked fine after messing with bios. Seems only thing to worry about is making sure you boot to the disc containing grub. Grub seems able to sort out where all the os's are.

[stoat]

I also facing hte same problem where i have one SATA(Windows) and another IDE(LInux) where the grub bootloader is corrupted the MBR of SATA(Windows). The windows hard disk cannot boot anymore.

I don't want to switch the devices in the BIOS.Do you still need help with this? If GRUB is installed in the master boot record and booting Fedora, maybe you just need to tweak grub.conf to boot Windows. The alternative is to repair the Windows master boot record and configure the Windows boot loader to boot both systems. So, if you want to tweak grub.conf, paste the results of cat /boot/grub/grub.conf and /sbin/fdisk -l. If you would rather repair the master boot record and configure the Windows boot loader, which Windows OS is it?

[Jongi]

Not if, as the OP mentioned, you are using two different physical disks.

I just came in here to ask the same question. Thanks Wangberg.

I've installed previous versions of FC on a different physical disk to XP (XP being on hda) without problems. Does FC7 have an issue with this?