BleepingComputer.com: Ubuntu 9.04 install on second harddrive w/ Win7RC.

I have Windows 7RC installed on C drive and would like to install Ubuntu9.04 on my second harddrive (E). My first attempt I installed Ubuntu on a partition on C drive.I reinstalled Windows 7RC to delete the Ubuntu partiton. Now I'm a little apprehensive about trying it again.

Being a computer novice, it's better to ask for advice.

I thought this might work?

Disconnect the C drive SATA cable and boot from the Ubuntu CD. When finished installing Ubuntu reconnect the C drive SATA cable. Or am I opening a larger can of worms.

Thanks for any help.

Jim

hey Jim P
I am not sure what would happen if you try what you suggested. The biggest problem i can think of if you try that is that you will have all your hard drives renamed in your Ubuntu install, and therefore your boot will not work.

On the "Prepare disk" page of the installation, you should be able to choose between hard drives. There should be a dropdown box which will have the primary hard drive as "sda", you want to choose the secondary hard drive which will be "sdb or sdc"
Just remember to choose the option "Use entire Disc"


i hope that helps
Regards
~powerjuce

Powerjuice,

Thanks for the advice. I must have missed the drop down box. That's where it got confusing for me.

I'll try it again.

Regards

Jim

 Jim P, on Aug 3 2009, 07:26 AM, said:

yes if you remove the sata cable from the C drive then it will install on E drive fine (select E drive)
but you dont need to , just select E drive when installing it


i would not disconnect the C drive becasue when you are installing grub(bootloader) it wont dectec the windows drive and will not put a menu for windows in its boot menu(and you will have to put the menu in your self)

if you install ubuntu on E drive then the dual boot loader(grub) will be on E drive, so you will have to tell the bios to boot from E drive(Sata1/2/3/4 or IDE1/2/3/4)

I would actually do it just the way you were going to. That's how I do it every time. Since they are SATA drives, it makes it a bit easier. There are no primary and secondary drives in regard to SATA.

After you install Linux on the second drive, you can go into GRUB and add the Windows drive and then you will also have to change the device.map file to tell it where the windows drive is. There is a trick to it though when you edit the menu.lst file for GRUB. Windows has to be first or it complains about it. So what you can do it trick Windows into thinking that it is the primary drive when it really isn't. Windows is funny that way. It wants to complain but it's easily fooled

I can post a step by step of how I do it and it has never failed me yet and I've been doing it that way for about 8 years

 curtadkins, on Aug 7 2009, 09:28 AM, said:

Curt,

That would be helpfull.

Thanks

Jim

Hey Jim,

See if this helps.

If you run into some problems, feel free to post back or even email me or PM or whatever.

 curtadkins, on Aug 7 2009, 04:55 PM, said:

Curt,

I figured it out using the Ubuntu disk partition.I didn't need to disconnect the harddrive.

I now have a triple boot system. Win7 on drive C and Ubuntu 9.04 & Mint7 on the other drive, whatever Linux calls them?. The only thing I don't understand is when I boot into Win7 it only shows I have one harddrive, Disc C. It doesn't show the drive with ubuntu& Mint. Ubuntu & Mint sees the drive with Windows7. Is this normal? Everything works fine so it's not a big deal to me.

Thanks

Jim

That is perfectly normal. Windows can not see a linux drive since it is extfs3 (or 4). Your Ubuntu and Mint installs should be able to see your windows drive no problem though since NTFS support is not very good.

Congrats though !