System Disk boot problem

[Koriantor]

Alright, I'm somewhat of a nub.

I put together my computer a couple of weeks ago. I only had a 30 gb HD and I installed ubuntu on it. Shortly afterwards, I realized that I really wanted to do some gaming, and WINE wasn't cooperating with me, so (with no money to buy anything) I installed the windows 7 beta over it. I then realized that I needed a lot more space than what I had to keep it useful. I then ordered a 640 gb HD, and finally got a copy of Vista (for free. I would never pay for such an abomination) and installed it on the 2nd HD. At that moment, I had windows 7 on the 30gb (1st) and vista on the 640gb (2nd). I wanted to install ubuntu on the 30 gb.

This is where my ignorance comes in.

I reformatted the first hard drive. I restart the computer and it told me something along the lines of, Boot error, insert system disk (I'm not sure on the quite words). I thought, crap, I think the boot launcher was on that HD, and I just killed it. I then thought, maybe if I install Ubuntu, the GRUB loader would fix it. It didn't :( and it still said the same error. I unplugged the 30gb HD and then it gave me a GRUB error (I'm guessing because it couldn't find the 30gb HD lol). I don't really care about the 1st HD so I was just considering trashing it, and then making an Ubuntu Partition on the 640 and installing it.

Would that work? Please give me some options.

[sTpny]

Get rid of the 30gig and install ubuntu on it. Make sure your Windows is clean and tight (virus free, spyware free, and run defrag. Then just put in your linux disk. Let the linux install handle the partioning. After the install, you might not be able to boot windows, but it'll still be there. Post if that happens, or if you run into any other problems.

Also, there are tonnes of good linux games out there. Many in the repos (tremulous, Scorch3d, TORCS, Trigger, gl-117, sauerbraten, etc) and lots more online that can be installed. (Smoking guns, World of Padman, Racer, Vdrift, etc) so you probably don't need to pollute your system with windows at all.

Good luck.

[Koriantor]

I put the 30gb back in, and the booting was just fine. I had ubuntu installed, but vista disappeared. When I thought maybe Vista had a repair function, so I started it, and the vista repair fails to find vista. I was originally going to partition my 640 in half, reinstall vista on the 2nd partition, move all my files from vista 1 to vista 2, and then reformat vista 1 and recombine (while keeping the 30gb as ubuntu). Unfortunatly I can't partition it for some reason so now I am stuck.

Will I have to just find my files through linux and Back it up on DVDs or is this recoverable?

(Bytheway, I game WAY too much to go totalbuntu)