[NTLUG:Discuss] adding 2nd hard disk

[William L. Jones]

On Wed, 2007-12-26 at 23:30 -0500, Christopher Thompson wrote:
> im adding a second hard disk for a windows disk (this is an old 20 gig
> that has win xp home on it) i have the disk jumpered to be a slave drive
> and the main drive (500 gig) jumpered to be the master but when i hook
> power to both drives the system boots windows instead of grub. now i
> understand i have to add the lines into grub to boot windows from the
> boot loader but shouldnt it be going into linux instead of windows if
> the linux drive is the "master" drive? or am i missing something?

Christopher,

Grub looks for a Micrs**t operating system on the first sector of the
first drive, the master drive in your case.  If you have it elsewhere,
Grub can still find it, but it requires some  messy programming in Grub.
Leave this sort of thing to C.Cox and other old pros.  Then Grub will
boot the first operating system listed in /boot/grub/menu.lst .

Your moves are:  Put the Micros**t OS in the first sector of the master
disk.  Use jumpers and harness to make it so.  Then install Linux
wherever you like.  During the Linux installation, be careful that the
Grub uses the boot sector of the master disk, overwriting whatever
Micros**t put there.  Use the correct answers in the installation
program to tell it where Linux is, and that you have a Micros**t OS,
which it will assume is in the first sector of the master disk.  When
finished with installation, boot Linux, go to /boot/grub/menu.lst and do
two things.  Change the boot delay time fro five seconds to thirty or
more seconds (no need to make rush decisions during boot), and see to it
that Linux is the first OS listed, making it the default boot.  The
title lines can be rewritten to be meaningful or abusive without
affecting operation.  Grub accepts whatever is there and keeps going.

William L. Jones