Results 1 to 5 of 5

Thread: Dual Boot using 2nd hard drive

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Beans
    1

    Dual Boot using 2nd hard drive

    I'm a new forum member and qualify as an absolute beginner.
    My question is . . "is it possible to use a 2nd installed hard drive for Ubuntu and leave the first drive for XP?

    If so how does one go about this without wiping out the first drive?

    Thanks,
    jdrob

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Beans
    24,961
    Distro
    Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa

    Re: Dual Boot using 2nd hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by jdrob View Post
    I'm a new forum member and qualify as an absolute beginner.
    My question is . . "is it possible to use a 2nd installed hard drive for Ubuntu and leave the first drive for XP?

    If so how does one go about this without wiping out the first drive?

    Thanks,
    jdrob
    Hi and welcome, here are some links that may help. Partitioning is the first
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition
    And here is one for the dual boot installation
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    The New Forest
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Xubuntu

    Re: Dual Boot using 2nd hard drive

    It certainly is - when you run the installer and get to the partition part - choose the second hard drive and tell it to use it.

    It is likely, but not certain, that the second drive is shown as sdbx depending on how many partitions there are; linux numbers drives/partitions in a different way to windows.

    As long as you tell it to install to the drive you want that is what it will do.
    http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installing is a good guide

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    uk
    Beans
    Hidden!

    Re: Dual Boot using 2nd hard drive

    i use two different hard drives for mine. just make sure you install ubuntu and grub to the correct hard drive. when its all installed, make sure you go into your bios and select this hard drive to boot from by default (well actually, select it to boot from a cdrom first if available, then boot from the hard drive with ubuntu on it). grub will then allow you to select which operating system you want to boot. if your bios is set to boot off your windows hard drive, then it'll just boot windows and you wont have a choice.

    if you cant figure out which hard drive is which, unplug one and go into your bios. the only hard drive detected will obviously be the one that's plugged in.

    if you're really worried about wiping out windows you could install ubuntu with the windows hard drive unplugged, but this will mean that windows wont be automatically detected and added as a boot option in grub, so its best to leave it plugged in and just make sure you select the right hard drive.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Beans
    83

    Re: Dual Boot using 2nd hard drive

    I used this to do mine


    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ght=confused57

    Worked great. First time I tried to set things up, I killed my NTLDR on the XP drive. To ensure I didn't do it again, I unplugged the power to the XP drive, and use GRUB to boot. I can select either OS from GRUB.

    Been using a year plus this way

    Best,

    Radioman991

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •