Dual boot using two drives


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I have a computer with Vista on a SATA drive and I have a second PATA drive that I was planning on installing to run Fedora 9. I don't want to use GRUB or any bootloaders because my wife isn't computer savvy and I would have to teach her what to do. Is there a way to install linux to the second drive and use my computers boot menu (it appears at the BIOS screen) to boot from that drive?

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Yes it is possible. Install linux on the PATA drive and have the grub bootloader installed on that PATA drive. With the computer set to boot from the SATA drive, it'll just boot vista. With it set to the PATA drive, it'll load grub from that drive and boot either Linux or vista.

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I swear to all that his holy that installing a boot manager like GRUB will make things easier for her than mucking with BIOS. It puts up a menu with a countdown to default boot selection and everything. :yes:

If you insist on using the BIOS method you talk about, we will need to learn more about this so we can figure out how to add Fedora into it.

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You me turn off the one drive with Vista on it using the Bios and then back and forth ..etc? I suppose it would work but Vita Boot Pro is so easy a caveman can use it. :) You just use the up/down arrow key to choose which OS to boot. Your way would probably work but would be quite an effort.

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When I boot up if I hit ESC then it brings up a boot menu allowing me to boot from any hard drive or USB drive. I'm currently testing Fedora out on a flash drive and I like it. I've had PCLinuxOS installed before with GRUB on my old comp and it booted straight to XP by default and she seemed ok with it. I'm not completely opposed to GRUB, I'm just hoping to do it this way to avoid any confusion at all. I actually think it will be easier to hit ESC and boot from the other drive anyway.

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If the option is to hit ESC, then select "Drive B", I think that the way you do this is to install Fedora to your PATA drive, and have it install GRUB to the PATA drive, too - not to the (default) boot drive.

This puts your SATA with Microsoft MBR and Windows, and your PATA with GRUB and Linux.

Then your BIOS ESC menu to select between them.

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i was in the same situation you where, and trust me my wife was just the worst when it came to knowing anything about computers. Once she saw the GRUB menu it was pretty self explanatory, choose which OS you want to boot, and it gives you a count down, so you can actually set which OS you want to be default. There is nothing there to teach, all she was to do is read the choices and pick one, easy as pie.

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Thanks guys. I gotta say this is one of the reasons why I am interested in using Linux more. The community is always there to help.

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