linux and windows on separate hard drives (1 Viewer)

[brett86]

was wondering if it was possible to have 2 hard drives connected at the same time as master and to set it so the computer only thinks 1 is connected at a time, and can only write to that one

for example, having a hard drive with win xp and another with linux connected both as master set up so when ur in windows the computer doesnt realise the linux hard drive is connected and cant write to it and the same the other way round

 

[Templar]

Windows should default save everything into its installation hard drive so it doesn't actually matter that much. You could disable the second hard drive in Windows with device manager if you really don't want it to show up. Not too sure about Linux though.

 

[sunny]

As far as I know you cannot have them both set as master as booting won't get you past the BIOS. Why do you want to set them both to master?

 

[seremify007]

Uhh I don't think your plan will work. If I recall correctly it won't be used in Windows if it's locked or not formatted to NTFS/Fat?

As for why you'd have them both set as Master is beyond me because that'll only cause problems when booting occurs- If you really wanted to I know there are definitely options to disable hard drives (I've seen them whilst exploring the many options in 2000/XP)~

 

[Adrian.]

was wondering if it was possible to have 2 hard drives connected at the same time as master and to set it so the computer only thinks 1 is connected at a time, and can only write to that one

for example, having a hard drive with win xp and another with linux connected both as master set up so when ur in windows the computer doesnt realise the linux hard drive is connected and cant write to it and the same the other way round

You can achieve all that you list without having to set both as master (which is as far as I know impossible). Windows won't recognise a Linux partition/drive (ext3, xfs...) and if you don't mount or put the Windows partition/drive in the fstab you won't know it's there. When using fdisk and other drive utilities in either OS you will be able to see the other drive but you won't in everyday use.

 

[schlagzeuger]

as far as windows is concerned, Linux doesn't exist. Just connect one hdd to master, the other to slave, or to master on another channel, it doesn't really matter. Then when installing linux let it install grub/lilo to the mbr and make sure that the windows partition is detected correctly by the linux distro's installer. BTW, it's much easier to use one of the linux boot loaders than to config the windows bootloader properly i believe.