Does Linux have to boot in C drive

[ozdream]

G'day all I am in the process of installing Red Hat and want to know can Linux be installed in my D drive and boot from this drive.

This is a 2nd drive on my system I am running XP on the c drive and we all know WinDoz has to have c drive to boot.

I want to run XP and linux (XP for my daughter and her school work)

Thanks Glen

[matthewbyrom]

Hi, Glen.

Is your D: Drive a second Hard Disk, or is it a separate partition on your one and only Hard Disk and you call it Drive D?

[ozdream]

Originally posted by matthewbyrom
Hi, Glen.

Is your D: Drive a second Hard Disk, or is it a separate partition on your one and only Hard Disk and you call it Drive D?

All my drive are single drives IE I have 4 drives all 80 gig no "logical drives" persay.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by ozdream
G'day all I am in the process of installing Red Hat and want to know can Linux be installed in my D drive and boot from this drive.

This is a 2nd drive on my system I am running XP on the c drive and we all know WinDoz has to have c drive to boot.

I want to run XP and linux (XP for my daughter and her school work)

Thanks Glen

Yes you can though you will either need to

1. Install the Linux bootloader in the mbr of the XP drive

2. Install the Linux bootloader into the Linux root partition and use the XP bootloader (boot.ini) to also boot Linux

3. Use a bootdisk to boot your Linux system

[ozdream]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Yes you can though you will either need to

1. Install the Linux bootloader in the mbr of the XP drive

2. Install the Linux bootloader into the Linux root partition and use the XP bootloader (boot.ini) to also boot Linux

3. Use a bootdisk to boot your Linux system


Thanks very much can't wait until I get home:)

[nothingbutlinux]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Yes you can though you will either need to

1. Install the Linux bootloader in the mbr of the XP drive

2. Install the Linux bootloader into the Linux root partition and use the XP bootloader (boot.ini) to also boot Linux

3. Use a bootdisk to boot your Linux system There's a 4th option: You can load the bootloader (lilo or grub) on the Linux drive, change the boot order in bios, and configure lilo.conf to boot the XP partition. The advantage is you're not touching the XP partition at all, and with NTFS that's the safest thing to do.

I've never used Grub so someone else will have to help with the specifics, but in lilo.conf you'll need the following lines:

boot=/dev/hdb # to load lilo in the MBR of drive D

other=/dev/hda1
. label="Windows"
. table=/dev/hda

The line "table=/dev/hda" is essential because you're booting from a drive external to windows. I've configured my system this way and it works great. Don't forget to go into bios and change the boot order to the slave drive!

[LooseCanon]

Hate to bring up an old(er) post, but I just installed SuSE 8.2 on a drive other than "c" and everything went smoothly with no problems at all. I'm a complete Linux newbie here (ask mdwatts, he'll tell ya). I just got SuSE Linux today and just couldn't wait to install it.

But my intent was to hang on to Windows for the time being until I feel comfortable enough with Linux and the apps I need for work/play. In the meantime there was work to do in order to install and work with either OS as needed. So now, after a painless install of both I have the pleasure of using Linux instead of just dreaming about it. Like I said, installation was a snap:

>> I wanted a setup where I could use WinXP on one drive, SuSE Linux on the other and keep the 30 gig-er for file storage and backups.

I have 3 HDD's:
1 - (Master IDE1) Maxtor 60G ATA-133 -- WIndows XP
2 - (Slave IDE1) Maxtor 60G ATA-133 -- SuSE Linux
3 - (Master IDE2) Quantum Fireball 30G ATA-66 -- Storage, etc..


1) partitioned Disk 0 (Master HDD) using WinXP CD (during the installation process). Made partitions and formated using NTFS (if there's anything worse than Windoze, it's FAT32 partitions - XP doesn't run well on FAT32). So Disk 0 looks like this:

c: 10GB - NTFS (WinXP installation - system drive)
d: 20GB - NTFS
e: 17GB - NTFS
f: 13GB - NTFS


2) After installing WinXP and making sure everything worked right, popped in the SuSE CD and booted up from there. Installation process starts and gets to YaST "installation Settings". Used the partitioner to make changes to "hdb" (Disk1 -- Slave drive).

Maxtor 60GB (drive1 -- hdb)
hdb1 - 512MB /boot (reiserfs)
hdb3 - 1.2G swap (swap)
hdb4 - 15G / (reiserfs)
hdb5 - 15G /home (reiserfs)
hdb6 - 15G /usr (reiserfs)
(left the rest of the drive empty for now)

3) Formated Disk2 (Fireball) full FAT32 (so Linux can see it)

4) Selected "LILO" as boot loader

5) changed the location of boot to /dev/hdb (default in installation process was /dev/hda .... since that drive is already formated NTFS I didn't want that to get messed up).

6) changed the boot sequence in my BIOS so that my slave drive boots first ....
.... and voila!

DUAL-BOOT (WinXP-Linux) ... with room to spare.

Everything installed in a snap and now I have WinXP on my Master drive running on NTFS, SuSE Linux on my Slave drive running on ReiserFS, and a third HDD is used for storage and backup by either OS. using LILO I can choose between either OS at boot-time. My default is:
1 - Linux
2 - Windows


Hope that helps.

BTW> this took some time to figure out. I read many of your posts here and wrote my plan down on paper so I could visualize what I wanted to do .... and that's the ONLY reason the results are good!

//Canon