How-To: Dual-Boot Windows and Ubuntu with Two Drives
A while back I wrote a popular post for eHomeUpgrade detailing how to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu on two drives. And to this day I still get questions on the best way to do this. Simply put, I recommend using two drives (which are relatively cheap these days) instead of partitioning one drive and risking Windows getting upset by changes you make to its drive size, edits to its boot loader, or just overwriting what you have in the Windows partition by accident when you install or add a Linux distro.
Instructions (the quick and easy way):
1. Install Windows on a separate hard drive (make sure that it’s setup as the PRIMARY using the drive’s jumpers) and leave the second drive unplugged.
2. After that’s done, connect the second hard drive and change the jumpers on the first hard drive (Windows) to SLAVE and make the Linux drive PRIMARY (both drives should be connected at point). Next, install Ubuntu.
3. What should happen: Ubuntu will automatically configure GRUB so that you can boot into Ubuntu by default (1st drive mounted as hd0) and Windows (2nd drive mounted as hd1) as an option. Note: when Ubuntu configures GRUB this way it will automatically trick Windows into thinking it’s the PRIMARY drive (the only way it will work) when it really is NOT.
Here’s a glimpse at what Ubuntu is doing to GRUB to make this magic work (/boot/grub/menu.lst) — luckily you don’t have to worry about it since it’s being done for you:
title Windows XP
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
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2 Responses to “How-To: Dual-Boot Windows and Ubuntu with Two Drives”
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About
Alexander Grundner is a San Francisco Peninsula based web publisher who spends most of his time tracking down news stories for eHomeUprade, attending technology events, or working on his next big project.
For fun he likes to stay active outdoors, take photographs, shoot video, hack together PHP/Python code, play with Linux, and test new technologies.
XP Ubantu Dual Boot - my experience.
Similar experience but . . .
I could not get the windows F6 procedure to accept my SATA 300GB driver (ASUS A7N8X). So I have used a spare 30GB to install Windows C: . XP sees the SATA but won’t boot from it.
THEN I discovered Ubuntu 7.04 - now 7.10 and it went naturally on to the SATA. The boot screen is as you describe it. For me it is irritatingly inflexible because I would prefer it to give me a no nonsense choice to boot XP OR Linux - no timers.
GRUB errors prevent any other additional slave ATA addtions despite much BIOS twiddling.(Slave jumper position used)
Need to be able to write unix I guess like DOS.
APART from that I think Ubantu and its ability to let me access my XP files to run on their equivalent apps is a great achievement. Prefer to use Ubuntu as first choice for all day to day “Office” , web and photo manipulation access.
AND it is so virus free, firewall secure and a dramatic absence of greedy manipulating commercialism and MS bloat. Very hardware friendly Epson 245, ADSL router, Canon flat bed . . .
Thanks for an interesting contribution.
Rick
following your guide, i could successfully set up dual-boot environment.
simple, but great guide!
Thanks.