Dual Boot Question

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 10:13 -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
> I have a machine running Windows 2000. I want to add a second hard drive for 
> Linux so I can keep the Windows 2000 drive for games and do some real work on 
> the Linux drive. :-). Actually, my daughter wants the games, and I want her 
> to do some real work on the Linux drive. I tried running the games under wine 
> and they do not work. 
> 
> I have setup dual boot drives when both Linux and Windows are on the same 
> drive with a common MBR (details are sketchy - it was a while ago). However, 
> it went very smoothly and flawlessly, so I have a lot of confidence that I 
> can do it again! Where fools rush in.....
> 
> Can grub handle booting across drives? Is the solution to my problem as simple 
> as (1) configuring the Windows drive as a secondary (slave) drive, (2) adding 
> the new drive as the master drive, (3) installing Debian on the new drive, 
> and (4) telling Grub (when it asks me) that I also want the option to boot 
> off the Windows drive as well? 
----
grub - Linux Win2K WinXP are indifferent to which drive they are started
from. The only issue with grub is that it must be installed into the
boot blocks which BIOS sees as the first drive - which on most systems
is going to be /dev/hda or the master drive on the first ATA controller.

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to...

Install a second drive for Linux as the slave on the first controller
and have partitions on this drive for
/boot # approx 100 Megabytes
/swap # depends upon RAM
a vfat partition for swapping data back and forth between Linux and
Windows
/     # of course

Grub should automatically create the entry for booting Windows - of
course this depends upon the installer used

Craig