Want to install Linux... Will this work?

[TechnoPro]

I want to install Mandrake Linux onto my PC. Would it be possible to do the installation on a second hard drive which is presently installed as my secondary master. The reason why is that I do not want any further partitioning of my main hard drive. I can't see why it wouldn't work, but wonder what I would use at bootup to specify which OS I wanted. Any advice?

 

[silverpig]

Yes it will work without any problems.

You have a few options for bootloaders. The way I recommend is to let the mandrake install put grub on the mbr of your windows hard drive. When you start up the computer you will be presented with a nice little graphical menu where you can choose windows or linux.

 

[TechnoPro]

How safe is it to let anything touch the MBR of my Windows drive? I know, it's a paranoid question...

 

[drag]

Having 2 HD's is the easiest way to do dual bootup.

Just remember:
/dev/hda =primary master
/dev/hdb =primary slave
/dev/hdc =secondary master
/dev/hdd =secondary slave

Each partition's name (file actually) is it's drive name plus partition number.
So the 2nd partition on the primary master drive is /dev/hda2,
The first partition on the secondary slave would be /dev/hdd1

If your bios supports selecting which harddrive to boot off of, then install the Mandrake's boot loader in the mbr of the second drive. That way you can dual boot by having the bios select the second drive then selecting the windows partition thru the Grub or Lilo (two common linux bootloaders) menu. Then if you don't like Linux or you accidently mess it up you still can select the first harddrive under the bios settings and boot up windows like nothing happened.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: TechnoPro
How safe is it to let anything touch the MBR of my Windows drive? I know, it's a paranoid question...

Safer than trying to mess with it when you don't really understand what you're doing. I've seen loads of people make extra work for themselves by second-guessing the Linux installers. Unless you've got an unusual hardware (say, mixed IDE/SCSI or Windows RAID controllers), just let it do its thing. Linux distros, unlike Windows, expect to share a machine with other OS's. 99% of the time, they do a darn good job.

 

[AmigaMan]

but please, please, please make backups of anything important on your windows drive. I tried to install RH8 a couple months/year ago and tried to "second guess the Linux installer". Stoopid me thought since I know so much about computers I can tell the linux thing what to do. Bad mistake. I rebooted and found out I couldn't access my windows drive. I bout crapped a brick cuz I didn't back anything up, but some helpful fellas here on AT got my windows drive back.