Re: [Sheflug] New hardware confusion

[Lesley Binks <lesley.binks@xxxxxxxxx>]

J Simpson wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I used to have a primary had drive of 20 gb and a 10gb secondary hard drive.
> 
> The main drive was dual boot with Wins 98 and Suse 10.0.  I used the
> secondary hard drive to back up the linux and to share data between drives.
> 
> As I moderate a group I decided to have the work done when I was on
> holiday.  So my CD writer was replaced with a DVD writer.
> 
> My primary hard drive was supposed to become my secondary harddrive and
> the new 120 gb my main primary drive.
> 
> However, nothing quite went to plan.  I have the new dvd writer.  My
> computer man does not do linux, so when he put in the 120gb drive wins
> 98 could not see it.
> 
> So he has taken out my old secondary hard drive (which is now sitting on
> my dining room table).
> 
> My old primary drive is connected up.  He has told me that he put wins
> xp on a 20 gb partition of the 120gb drive.  He has told me that I must
> not connect the two drives together until I have transferred the data
> across as xp will do strange things and I will lose every thing.
> 
> So I am a bit lost really.
> 
> Is this too simple:
> 
> Why can't I just install linux on the 120 gb hard drive and set the boot
> loader to see the suse and windows 98 on the other drive?  So I would
> just overwrite the xp he has put on?
If you know how to edit the lilo or grub files and what to put in then I 
don't see why not.

If you install over the Windows XP partition ie, overwrite it then you 
will destroy what he has put on there.  Alternatively, as the disk is 
partitioned up, keep the XP partition there are and use the remaining 
100G for whatever distro you are likely to install.  SuSE used to 
automagically recognise the existence of XP and dual boot with it.

> 
> And I am not too sure what I am supposed to do with my old drive as I do
> want the information on it.  Can you have 3 hard drives connected on a
> machine?

With EIDE (aka PATA these days) you can have four items connected over 
two channels.  As you have three IDE components already connected you 
have the cables for the whole thing.  Under Linux I think the channels 
are assigned thus:

channel 0: hda and hdb
channel 1: hdc and hdd

There may be some performance issues combining a DVD writer and a hard 
disk drive on the same channel.  It'll slow the hard disk drive down I 
think.

A limitation of IDE is that you can only boot off the first item in the 
channel, so your first disk on channel 0 should be your normal booting 
drive, and the first item on the second channel should be the DVD 
writer.  The first item on the channel is the one at the very end of the 
cable.

I have a feeling your man isn't necessarily comfortable with partitions 
and multiboots.  If you connect up your new drive and your old primary 
on the same channel booting off the new drive then you would boot using 
XP and there should be no problem viewing what's on the 98 drive because 
XP knows FAT32.  I don't see that the OS on one will interfere with the 
other.

However, your new XP install might not like your Linux partitions on the 
old primary drive - esp if they are not FAT32 - and this is where you 
may come unstuck.

What is probably best is to sit there with the box open one night and 
boot up with the old disk configuration, back all your data off the SuSE 
and Win 98 from the primary to the secondary.  Make a note of all the 
grub/lilo bootloading info - which partitions etc.

Take these disks out and install the new disk and install your distro of 
choice to dual boot with XP.  Make sure everything boots up okay in both 
and that XP can only see the FAT32 partitions you want it to and can't 
see the Linux partitions that aren't FAT32. Linux will recognise the 
windows partitions but they will be safe.

Now put the old primary back in as the secondary on the same channel as 
the new primary and boot into Linux.  Edit the grub/lilo config to add 
the old primary boot config -
-----------BUT YOU MUST REMEMBER-
to change /dev/hda to /dev/hdb when referring to the bootable partitions 
on the old primary because that old primary is now your secondary.  Your 
old secondary is sitting there holding a complete back up of your data.

I can't guarantee what XP will do when it spots a Linux partition on the 
(new secondary/old primary) so boot up into Linux first and make sure 
you can see all the partitions on both drives.  You may have to accept 
losing the Linux distro and data in the Linux partitions on the (old 
primary/new secondary).

IIRC XP doesn't like Linux, but if you partition the drive correctly and 
then install Linux in partitions XP doesn't know about it doesn't nuke 
them.  That's the situation you will have on the new primary if you 
install Linux after XP.

However, if you boot into XP on the new primary, it may discover the 
partitions on the second drive and will try to nuke/format the Linux ones.

HTH
Regards

Lesley









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