can i install linux on a SATA drive

[rookie1010]

Hello

I have got 4 IDE drives

2 hard drives
cd rom drive
dvd RW

using the 4 (master-slave ) - (primary-secondary) combinations

I was wondering if i could install Linux on the SATA drive and have a prompt screen at boot up time prompting if i wanted to boot up in windows xp or in linux?

[eyeCpc]

Once you decide on a distro and whether or not it will be Grub, Lilo, or another boot loader you simply set the sata drive as the default hard drive in the bios. The Linux installer will automatically detect and add any other OSs found into the options seen when the boot loader is first seen.

Trying to get a triple boot of XP, Vista, and ubuntu 7.10 working here the installer saw XP added right in while that was on the second of two sata drives currently in use here. When Grub was installed on the root partition a second boot loader was used to see the option for ubuntu on the Vista boot options.

[rookie1010]

thanks for the reply,

so there is no problem installing ubuntu and windows xp at the same time, with windows xp on the IDE and linux on the SATA.

i have got a four year old motherboard (gigabyte 81875 ultra), the BIOS should not be a constraint, correct?

[Jayce]

Hey, keep in mind about something. I have 2 sata drives and 1 ide drive. I use the first sata drive as my main drive which houses a 25gb XP partition and the remainder (about 215gb) for Linux.

Whenever I reinstall Linux, I always get grub boot errors. The way I work around this is I have to shut down my system and unplug my ide drive and my other sata drive. Then if I redo the installation of Linux, it works great.

I've read bits and pieces of different articles and I gather from what I've heard that by default, grub likes to install itself on an IDE drive before a sata drive... so if an ide drive is available, it'll shoot itself over there instead of the sata. That's why unplugging all other drives works, because it has no choice but to go to the sata drive. That way the boot loader is right there with the operating systems.

However, this kind of confuses me thinking about it now. If you can successfully install XP on drive A, Linux on drive B, where in the world is the boot loader?? Because if XP and Linux are both on drive A, and grub is on drive B, it fails to load either OS... how's that work with separated drives?

[rookie1010]

thanks for the reply,

i am an absolute noob with respect to linux.

i am planning to dedicate a SATA drive to linux,

can the boot loader not be on drive A or drive B?

[eyeCpc]

The boot loader used is installed into the mbr(master boot record) on the default boot drive. If drive A is set in the bios as the default drive it would be there.

If B is default the boot loader has to point to the one or more OSs on the A drive. The mbr code checks the partition table for any active partitions and proceeds to execute the boot sector of any one partition when selected from a boot options menu.

[Jayce]

eye - maybe that's my problem? That my main SATA drive isn't set to default in my bios, and that's why my boot loader goes to another drive by default.

[eyeCpc]

Unfortunately that may be why you are not seeing a distro load since it was configured into the mbr of the drive other then the one currently set as the default. With the Windows installer if an ide drive is present the boot files are automatically placed there even while seeing the Windows files and directories created on a separate sata drive.

The ide drive is seen as the first drive on the system for Windows while the boot loader for Linux depends on a few other things. When installing a distro on the default sata(one of two seeing Vista) it added XP in(second sata). The live cd install saw Vista knocked out while finishing the stage 2 like Windows sees on the first boot up once all setup files are copied to the main drive.

When going to install all over again seeing the distro installed on the XP drive it added the Vista loader(Grub4Dos used for the dual boot) in as a boot option. That failed to see stage 2 however with repeated attempts with the live for cd version of ubuntu Gutsy 7.10.

The root partition if you are using the install option on the live cd has to be defined as the mounting point by highlighting the root itself being an ext3 type partition(both primary and extended tried here) with the "/" item selected when choosing the edit button. With Grub seeing a good install into the mbr you should see something like this when first booting.

ubuntu 7.10
ubuntu 7.10 (recovery mode)
ubuntu 7.10 memtest
Windows XP or Vista(depending on version)
Windows XP or Vista(second identical listing)