Dual-Booting on 2 HDDs

aSc1@3

aSc1@3

New Member
Hello, I currently have the system in my sig, with xp on the 40gb and ubuntu on the 200gb HDD. is it possible to dual-boot on them without having to go into the bios and switch the boot order? Would dual-booting be more possible if i were to re-install xp onto a new partition on the 200gb HDD? If i need to download a program to dual-boot, I would prefer one that is password protectable. My situation is that XP will be the Family's Computer and Ubuntu will be for me on only. Thanks for any help!
 
is it possible to dual-boot on them without having to go into the bios and switch the boot order? Would dual-booting be more possible if i were to re-install xp onto a new partition on the 200gb HDD? If i need to download a program to dual-boot, I would prefer one that is password protectable. My situation is that XP will be the Family's Computer and Ubuntu will be for me on only. Thanks for any help!
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Yes, you can dual-boot as is. Ubuntu comes with a boot loader called GRUB. Basically, it runs at the very end of the Install process and recognizes any other OS's on the system. It will then read the info on the most recent boot loader and add itself to it (regardless of what HDD it's on), allowing you to select which OS to Boot to. While the actual program itself isn't password protected, you do need to be logged into Ubuntu (password needed to enter the system) and then be given Root access to modify the menu.lst file (again, password), so you don't need to worry about security or anyone playing around with it.

I've 2 80 GB Drives; one is Purely XP stuff and the other is Purely Ubuntu stuff - GRUB took over the MBR for XP on one Drive and I can still boot to both - the the boot order won't matter.

As far as reinstalling XP, that's purely a Partitioning decision on your part, depending on how you want your drives laid out. Personally, I'd opt to break up the 200GB Drive with room for XP, a space for my files, and a backup space for my files, while dropping Ubuntu on the 40 Gig (Ubuntu uses a LOT less space), but I'm super OCD with Partitions, so YMMV:)

The biggest name that keeps coming up in searches is Acronis OS Selector.
It seems to be what you need but it costs $.
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Not needed.
 
thanks imsati. the ubuntu drive is master and the xp drive is slave. once i get into ubuntu, what do i do to get to GRUB?
 
Open Terminal and type "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" (no quotes).

It looks confusing, but is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. If you want to change 'Default=''s, remember, it starts with 0, not 1. My advice would be to copy/paste the entire contents first and save it just in case something happen and you need it back to the original. Also, I like to move around entire Boot entries (they determine the order the OS's show up after POSTing) rather than change the Default= settings, but I'm just odd like that:)

I might not have a chance to get to it until later today, but if you get stuck and want to email/PM me a copy of your original menu.lst file and let me know the order you need stuff in, I'll should be able to tweak it at some point.
 
so does your computer prompt you for which OS you want to boot into on bootup after that,imsati? ive wondered how to switch OS without going into bios, as well.
 
^ Yes. Once Ubuntu is installed, Grub will take precedence over all other Bootloaders unless the previous BL (like XP's MBR) is restored. When the menu.lst file is opened or editing, you can set it up however you want; change the default OS that is loaded, change the timeout before the default OS is selected, change the order of the OS's as they appear in Grub, etc.

If you'd like, I can Post what a menu.lst file looks like so you two (and any others) can take a look before diving into it on your system. Hopping away for a bit, so might not be until later tonight at the earliest (and a small chance of not until tomorrow), but just let me know.
 
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