Booting An OS

[Creedyou]

If you have 2 hard drives each with an OS, does the BIOS try load the MBR of the primary master only or will it look to the primary slave next if it doesn't find a master? Will it also try the secondary IDE?

 

[Need4Speed]

primary only...thats a nice thing about scsi bios...you can change the boot order there

you'll notice most modern BIOS say boot order:
floppy
cdrom
hdd0 <----- primary only

 

[asb002]

Actually, some BIOSes allow you to change the boot order to any drive on the primary or secondary channel. Like mine, for example (ECS K7S5A). I can pick IDE-0, IDE-1, IDE-2, IDE-3. It will attempt to boot to that drive. Also, many BIOSes have a "boot menu" thats accessed by hitting a key during the POST (mine's F8). You can pick whatever you want to boot from there.

 

[Need4Speed]

well i stand corrected! good info

 

[Spydermag68]

Another solution to you problem is a hard-drive switcher. TechTV has the plans

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/howto/story/0,24330,3425846,00.html

 

[yukichigai]

Yeah, my mobo (Soyo Dragon KT-400 Lite) lets me pick the boot order to 4 devices. It'll even let me boot to my USB or network devices if I want to. You could probably get a bios upgrade for your mobo if it won't let you do that, but no guarantees.

 

[Creedyou]

So would I be able to install Linux on the secondary cable if I already have WinXP on the primary cable and then just use XP's boot loader? I saw the FAQ about this, but it said I had to put both drives on the primary cable which I do not want to do.