I NEED HELP to dual boot windows 7 and ubuntu on seperate HDs

i have a rather powerful computer in the greater scheem of things... and i would like to dual boot from two separate drives, ubuntu linux, and windows 7. i am in need of thorough instruction! i halve found alot of people online asking about ubuntu, people reply talking about other OSs and saying it should help. also if anyone could tell me what toll this might take on my power supply or my ram to have 2 HDs running at once technicaly. please and thank you. Thor.

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello.


The easiest way to do away with boot issues between separate Operating Systems (OS) is to use the BIOS one time boot menu to select which OS to boot at system startup, each motherboard has an individual hot-key to tap during system start-up to access this menu.

If you have 2 separate Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and have one OS installed to one HDD and you want to install another OS to the second HDD, disconnect the HDD with the first OS installed on it and leave only the HDD you want to install the second OS to connected.
Install the second OS to the connected HDD and when complete and the system is booting good, power down and reconnect the first HDD with the first OS on it.

This way the OSs will boot independently of each other and there will be no boot conflicts between the 2 separate OSs to have to sort later.

Then set the BIOS to boot the HDD / OS you want as default and if you want to start the other (new) OS you use the BIOS one-time boot menu to select that HDD / OS to start when the PC is started.

• Asus - F8
• HP/Compaq - Esc
• Sony - F2
• Acer – F12
• Packard Bell
• Gateway - F10
• eMachnes - F10
• Gigabyte – F12
• Toshiba - F12
• Dell - F12

would i need to use any jumpers on the backs of the drives? like slave master stuff?

Do make your HP Recovery Disk first.


How to make HP Recovery DVD disks:
Recover Windows Vista Operating System Using HP Recovery - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

How to make HP Recovery USB disk:
Creating a Recovery Disk on a USB Flash Disk HP Pavilion dv6700z CTO Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

or
You can Order HP Recovery Disks from here:
Compaq Mini CQ10-500 PC series - HP Notebook PCs - Order Recovery Discs for Windows 7, Vista, or XP - c00810334 - HP Business Support Center

Hi Ted

Packard Bell

FUJITSU F12

Only with IDE HD drives.

Thornton said:

i have a rather powerful computer in the greater scheem of things... and i would like to dual boot from two separate drives, ubuntu linux, and windows 7. i am in need of thorough instruction! i halve found alot of people online asking about ubuntu, people reply talking about other OSs and saying it should help. also if anyone could tell me what toll this might take on my power supply or my ram to have 2 HDs running at once technicaly. please and thank you. Thor.

Your rig likely uses a SATA hard drive thus adding a second physical drive is no probelm and doesn't require jumper settings. Adding a second physical SATA drive will only add about 7 watts to your power supply load (very low, not to worry). RAM makes no difference.

I have four physical hard drives I can boot from. Here is what I did/do...

• Unplug current hard drive(s) from the drive itself.
• Install and plug in new hard drive.
• Start computer, insert Linux CD/DVD and boot to it.
• Install Linux as you desire.
• Shut down/turn off computer.
• Reconnect original HD(s).
• Start computer, go to BIOS and set the desired DEFAULT hard drive boot order.

To change boot order, enter the "one time" boot select during startup - keystroke will depend on your mobo/BIOS (mine is F12). Select the desired drive and go for it.

Regards,
GEWB