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My PC has two separate hard drives. Is it possible to to have Windows on the one and UBUNTU on the other so that when I boot up I have a choice to which drive I can go to. I like working on Linux, but sometimes I have a program which needs a Windows OS and does not prefer working on two different machines.
Thanks
Yes it is possible, I did it once and found it safer to use two hard drives than having a dual boot setup. I used the primary hard drive for Ubuntu and the secondary hard drive for Windows. Just remember that when you want to change the operating system e.g to boot up from Windows instead of Ubuntu Linux, you need to go to the Bios and disable one of the hard drives first. I n my case I had to disable the primary hard drive Hope this helps!
Hi Faan at the time I was always a windows user until I heard about Ubuntu. So I installed Ubuntu onto my second hard drive so that I could play around with it without interfering with my windows stuff. I liked Ubuntu Linux so much that I found that I was booting more from it than windows. That is why I think it is a good idea to have a primary and a secondary hard drive on your machine. I have since migrated to Apple Mac and am loving it!
There are variations in setting up a dual boot system.
The most common way is to use Grub. This will show a menu at startup, and you can choose whether to load Ubuntu or Windows.
There is no need to disable a drive in the BIOS.
The Ubuntu system will be able to see all files and folders on any drive by default.
The second way is to load your second operating system in a virtual machine (VM). That way you can run it like you do a program in windows. It will have its own space and be independent. You can easily swap to windows that way.
There are variations in setting up a dual boot system.
The most common way is to use Grub. This will show a menu at startup, and you can choose whether to load Ubuntu or Windows.
There is no need to disable a drive in the BIOS.
The Ubuntu system will be able to see all files and folders on any drive by default.
The second way is to load your second operating system in a virtual machine (VM). That way you can run it like you do a program in windows. It will have its own space and be independent. You can easily swap to windows that way.
I presume Grub is the window that opens when you boot up.
I am not sure whether Ubuntu will show in the opening window whatever are on both drives? If it does then one can have Windows on the one drive and UBUNTU on the other?
I have tried the VM way, but is very slow. I was told for a VM to be effective you have to have lots of RAM.
I presume Grub is the window that opens when you boot up.
I am not sure whether Ubuntu will show in the opening window whatever are on both drives? If it does then one can have Windows on the one drive and UBUNTU on the other?
I have tried the VM way, but is very slow. I was told for a VM to be effective you have to have lots of RAM.
Grub is called a boot loader and starts up just after the BIOS POST. It gives a simple menu with options and is included with all Linux releases.
You can tell the PC where to install Ubuntu. Grub will be given the identity of the HDD and sector etc.. I haven't tried it on another drive, but noticed that this was in fact the default option during the install on my PC (which has two drives on separate SATA controllers)
Yes, a VM would need extra memory. There are options to set RAM allocations during setup, as well as video memory. I prefer the multi-boot scenario, and have Ubuntu, Win7 and Solaris (UNIX).
Yes, a VM would need extra memory. There are options to set RAM allocations during setup, as well as video memory. I prefer the multi-boot scenario, and have Ubuntu, Win7 and Solaris (UNIX).
I concur. The reason a VM needs lots of RAM is because you're actually running 2 OSs at once - i.e. each using a portion of RAM and thus taking it away from the other. So you'd need at least 2x the amount of RAM as you would with a Dual Boot setup. Even then you'd still not get the same performance out of the VM - remember it's sharing resources with the host OS, and to date they've not implemented any form of decent graphics acceleration in any of the VM's I know of (Apple's Parralels, Microsft's Virtual Machine, Oracle's Virtual Box, or VMWare). They all have a "software" graphics card which maps onto your hardware card - but usually has a lot less performance. To the point where some 3D programs/games will simply not run inside a VM, no matter what the PC's specs are. Then of course you also note that the CPU is shared between the 2, the VM setup allows you to give one or more cores to the VM OS - but then the host won't be able to use these cores.
There are even other ways of booting into other OS's. E.g. having a USB external disc / flash-disc with Linux could also work. You'd simply restart the PC with the USB plugged in (some once-off Bios setting to first try booting from USB, then HDD). Previously I've actually done it this way - if the USB is unplugged my Laptop would boot into WinXP, if it's plugged in the Grub screen appears and defaults to Ubuntu.
And if you're very careful, you could even run a dual-boot / VM combination. A non-recommended feature (I know of VirtualBox VM having this, so probably the others as well) is to link to a physical HDD or Partition instead of the default VM image. That way you can have a dual-boot working through Grub, while also allowing you to use the exact same Linux installation inside a VM on Windows. Though, I'm warning you - this can very easily corrupt discs (as both Windows & Linux try to work on those discs at the same time). If you do go this route, then make sure that Windows doesn't try to mount the Linux partition while the Linux VM is running. Other way round would be a similar story.
Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. - Norm Franz And central banks are the slave clearing houses
Oh, Yes. And if you go with dual-booting: It's not strictly necessary to have 2 discs. Just recommended. While installing an OS (most of them) there would be some feature where you can partition a single disc into multiple portions (i.e. splitting a disc into many drives). Performance-wise it wouldn't make such a big impact since the 2 OSs would not be running at the same time - i.e. the heads on the disc wouldn't constantly sweep back and forth between the 2 portions (partitions).
It's actually a better idea to have the 2 discs split in any case (even with only one OS, no dual-boot) - say have your primary set as the System Disc with all your programs installed. Then you can have the secondary contain your data. The benefit here is that the 2 physical discs can read/write concurrently - making performance a bit better. So on a dual-boot with 2 discs I'd actually partition the primary to hold both OSs (one OS per partition), leave the secondary as a partition formatted with NTFS so both Windows & Ubuntu can read/write to it for data storage.
The Grub thingy is simply a boot-manager installed by Linux (and most other OSs like BSD/Unix). Windows has a similar feature in itself - it just looks different. Though I'd recommend installing Windows first and then Linux - the windows boot manager tends to not work too well with anything but itself. Grub needs hardly any manual settings at all when you install Linux last, it simply checks what is on all your drives / partitions and creates a menu option for each (automatically). The last one installed would overwrite whatever boot-manager is already on your PC.
Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. - Norm Franz And central banks are the slave clearing houses
And if you're very careful, you could even run a dual-boot / VM combination. A non-recommended feature (I know of VirtualBox VM having this, so probably the others as well) is to link to a physical HDD or Partition instead of the default VM image. That way you can have a dual-boot working through Grub, while also allowing you to use the exact same Linux installation inside a VM on Windows. Though, I'm warning you - this can very easily corrupt discs (as both Windows & Linux try to work on those discs at the same time). If you do go this route, then make sure that Windows doesn't try to mount the Linux partition while the Linux VM is running. Other way round would be a similar story.
Way too complicated, it always try to use the KISS principle, what works for me is to install each OS on its own hard drive, but when installing UBUNTU I unplug the Windows drive so it cannot be touched, after UBUNTU sucessfully boots I plug the Windows drive back in and let GRUB then find the Windows install, set the Linux as boot drive and use GRUB to boot into either installation.
Way too complicated, it always try to use the KISS principle, what works for me is to install each OS on its own hard drive, but when installing UBUNTU I unplug the Windows drive so it cannot be touched, after UBUNTU sucessfully boots I plug the Windows drive back in and let GRUB then find the Windows install, set the Linux as boot drive and use GRUB to boot into either installation.
Well even simpler, if you don't unplug Windows and then install Ubuntu, you need not manually setup Grub later and set the Ubuntu drive/partition as default - that would be the default setting anyway for the usual Ubuntu install. The benefit of your method though would be that the Windows Boot-Manager still resides on the same disc, and to undo the Ubuntu's Grub install would mean to simply set the Windows disc as the default bootup disc in BIOS.
The partitioning (as I've stated) is not necessarily good/bad, it just makes performance better when used properly. It depends on your situation - how many programs run reading/writing to disc at any one time (e.g. are you running some sort of server program in the background), depending on what's going on during the usual course it might not make any difference having a 2nd disc/partition. When installing any Linux it automatically makes at least 2 partitions (the 2nd meant for its virtual RAM swap disc). Windows places its virtual RAM into a file on its system disc - some would suggest to move this file onto a separate disc of its own (again due to performance issues), also (even just a partition on the same disc) helps prevent fragmentation of swap space.
Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. - Norm Franz And central banks are the slave clearing houses
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