Linux Help

[watts289]

K guys i got my ubuntu cd's but i have a problem. I have 2 hard disks. One boots xp, and the other has the my docs, page file, ultilietes all my programs installed there. I have a 8gb drive i want to use, but it will be slaved, and i do not want it to touch the other 2 drives at all. not even the boot loader.

what could i do?

[strick94u]

xp does not play well with others not adviseable warning warning
a few years ago there was a company that made a hardware solution it would switch via a switch or use hard drive trays but linux will screw up the master boot record and damn your files to the darkest reigons of software hell

[Demon_82]

Your motherboard has one of this handy AMI BIOS "press F11" boot menus? If it does have one it could work... unplug the disks wich you don't want to be touched by Linux (power and data cables), and install Ubuntu in the remaining one. Then plug all back and try to choose the boot unit from that menu... if it works as I think it should let you choose the started OS by selecting it's unit. If your motherboard doens't support this menu, but it let's you choose the boot order of the units one by one, and not only between HDD/CD-DVD/FDD/USB, you could play with it and change the starting OS by changing the BIOS setup, it's slower but it may also work.

[watts289]

My bios does let me change the order of the hard disks booted, so it might just work. Is there a way to make the 8gb disk a slave but not have the real "master" touched. with the linux boot loader

[Demon_82]

As I said, unplug both cables from the master disk while you install Linux... it will save it completely. Once installed I think that they will be separated safley as they will boot only considering themselves 'the true master disk', and ignoring the other one.