Two hard drives [Solved]

[keithp]

I've searched the forum and don't think my specific problem has occurred before.

My computer has two hard drives:

1) The master (drive A) which contains XP and has its MBR on its own drive.

2) The slave (drive B) on which I want to install Linuxmint. However, I don't want the Mint's GRUB to install itself on the MBR of drive A, but on the MBR of drive B. I don't want Mint to touch the XP installation, they must be entirely separate. I will then press F8, as the BIOS boots, to choose which of the two drives I want to boot.

This can be done, as I am successfully doing it with another Linux distro (which will be replaced by Mint).

However, from what I remember from previous Mint installations, I can't choose GRUB to install itself on drive B, it automatically installs on to drive A.

Can anyone please help with a suggestion how I can tell GRUB to use drive B?

Many thanks.

Keith

[lost]

To tell Grub to install on to the second drive there will be an advanced settings button after where the partions are setup. When you click it you can tell which drive to install into. For you it should be HD1 for the second drive.

[draceena]

Or you could be "super" cautious and unplug your windows XP drive and just leave the drive connected you want Mint to be installed to. Once you are done installing then just reconnect the windows XP drive itself.

[keithp]

lost and draceena.

Thank you both for your replies.

Sorry, lost, but I missed the advanced button, assuming it had to do only with manual partitioning.

They are both excellent replies. Playing very safe, I will probably do both suggestions and unplug the master drive and also press the advanced button.

cheers

Keith

[yamawho]

Or you could be "super" cautious and unplug your windows XP drive and just leave the drive connected you want Mint to be installed to. Once you are done installing then just reconnect the windows XP drive itself.

The only issue may might experience is when you plug the XP hdd back in is you may not be able to boot into Mint after you press F8. This will be caused by the renumbering of HD0, which was the Mint hdd during the install to HD1 after you plug in the XP hdd.

[grimdestripador]

in that case. when it boots wrong, all you'd have to do it press "e" on the line with root(0,0) and change some numbers

[keithp]

What I eventually did, was to unplug the XP drive, and then install Mint. That way I was certain of Mint's grub being on the Mint hard drive and not touching the XP drive. It was an "idiot-proof" method, and has worked very well.

Keith