Installing Ubuntu 10.10 on a second hard drive

**Rebelli0us** · January 6th, 2011

Originally Posted by kyral210

Ok, please let me know if I have this right.

My main boot loader & windows 7 is loaded on drive C. I leave that 100% alone
I install Ubuntu onto drive D being VERY careful to tell it to install Grub & ubuntu onto D drive.

If I do that Ubuntu wont screw up Windows?

Ok, so what then? How do I get the option to boot into Windows or Ubuntu working, so is it automatic?

Really sorry I am a little helpless here, still getting to grips with Ubuntu. I think Windows 7 is better, but I like Ubuntu on the work laptop so much I want a copy of it on my home PC.

Yep, you can have the 2 OS completely independent and boot each with the BIOS boot menu -- F8, F12.

Linux doesn't use letters, your C: drive will probably be shown as /dev/sda and your D: as /dev/sdb and the installer should also show the volume label on your Windows NTFS disk which will help you make sure to install Linux on the OTHER disk. So if you install on /dev/sdb and put the boot loader on /dev/sdb as well, your windows disk will be untouched. Also since the 2 disks will have their own boot loader, you could remove either one and the other will still boot ok.

**oldfred** · January 6th, 2011

kyral210,

As Kansasnoob posted before run this so we can see your exact drive layout. I am concerned if you really have a second hard drive or just a partition. Windows calls both drives & partitions as drives, so D: can be either a drive or a partition.

From liveCD:

Code:

sudo fdisk -lu

**Rebelli0us** · January 6th, 2011

Originally Posted by oldfred

kyral210,

As Kansasnoob posted before run this so we can see your exact drive layout. I am concerned if you really have a second hard drive or just a partition. Windows calls both drives & partitions as drives, so D: can be either a drive or a partition.

From liveCD:

Code:

sudo fdisk -lu

Good idea, although he said in the OP that "PC has four hard drives". And since he said he's new to Linux he's more comfortable using Windows so he could also use Windows' "Disk Management" to see how many drives & partitions are available.... right-click My Computer > Manage > Disk management.