Installing Ubuntu on another Hard Drive Disk (F:)

Question

I want to install Ubuntu side by side on my Windows XP.But instead of placing it on HDD C: drive, i want to place it on a slave HDD (which would be drive F:).I already tested on a virtual machine in placing on a second HDD but it doesn't appear to work. How should i proceed?

What do you mean by "it doesn't seem to work"? What happens and when? — Tanel Mae, May 05 '13 at 10:42
I mean "trial and failure" could not get it on the secondary HDD — Lucas, May 05 '13 at 10:44

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 05 '13 at 10:58

3

Keep in mind that Ubuntu will not list your drives as C: D: etc. but will refer to them as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.

Please make a backup of your important data to be able to restore them if anything fails by accident

Boot the CD, and start the installation. Once you get to the installation screen, choose Something else

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Choose the second Drive

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After you choose it, click on Create new partition table, and just follow the rest of the steps, as shown in the images.

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edited May 05 '13 at 10:58

Takkat

142,284

answered May 05 '13 at 10:54

Mitch

107,631

Shoudn't "Device for boot loader" be /dev/sdb ? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 10:59
The reason its sda and not sdb is because of where and how Grub 2 writes the information. – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:03
Also, when i try in a larger scale (Slave is 20 GB and Master 300 GB) what should be the proportion on the slave file for ext4 partition and swap area? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:08
Normally swap is recommended to be equal to the amount of RAM. – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:12
is there any pattern for ext4 partition? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:14
Uh...Drat.An error occured and it's not possible to place the bootloader on /dev/sda – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:15
What do you mean a pattern? – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:16
What error? Can you add the info from the error? – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:17
By pattern i mean what must be place on ext4 part when i have intel dual core 2.0 Ghz,2GB Ram,Intel GMA video card and windows xp on Master whit 147 free space and a fully free F:/ file. – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:18
And it said that something did not let the bootloader to be on dev/sdz – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:19
For that you might want to look at this – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:19
Showed again the error(executing 'grub-install/dev/sda' failed.This is an fatal error) – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:21
Take a look at the answer here – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:26
Let me know what's going on, and if you need more help. – Mitch May 05 '13 at 11:32
Is everything working OK? Has the problem been solved? – Mitch May 05 '13 at 16:35
Yeah probably.Let me just format my F: HDD – Lucas May 05 '13 at 19:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

1

Edit: As we discovered my answer is not that relevant if you use Wubi as it will do all the complicated work for you. But if somebody reading this plans to do it with grub instead then keep reading.

The problem with such setup is that it makes bootloader setup bit more difficult. Namely when you want to boot to XP then Windows requires to be on the first boot device. The problem is that grub (Linux bootloader that usually would provide the menu at boot where you can chose which OS you want to start) is installed on the second HD where Ubuntu is and if you boot to grub (that is, use the HD where Ubuntu is as the first boot drive) and chose Windows then it won't start.

Remember that /dev/sda, /dev/sdb... are just names that the drives have in Linux. Windows knows nothing about it and neither does bios. Windows uses names such as C:, D: ..but neither does know Linux or bios about them. What matters here is boot order set in bios. For changing the boot order in bios there are lot of guides available and it is dependent on your hardware model.

What you need to do is to set up XP bootloader to let you chose between Ubuntu and Windows. There is a good guide for it here. I have not tested it myself but you should get general idea and what keywords to search for. In your case Ubuntu would be installed on a separate HD and in theory you should not be worried about overwriting Windows MBR. Of course it doesn't hurt to unplug Windows HD before you install Ubuntu just to make sure nothing funny happens during the installation.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered May 05 '13 at 11:13

Tanel Mae

1,340

What if i let the bootloader on /dev/sdb ?Will it work? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:25
Hello?You still online? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:42
Don't be needy. – Tanel Mae May 05 '13 at 11:49
At least answer me? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 11:56
I edited my answer and all the new information is there. Or do you have new questions? – Tanel Mae May 05 '13 at 12:00
Marco Ceppi said Wubi does that.Does it? – Lucas May 05 '13 at 12:02
Does what? Make changes to Windows bootloader? I don't know. I have never used Wubi. – Tanel Mae May 05 '13 at 12:09
Wubi is inside the disc of ubuntu install. – Lucas May 05 '13 at 16:03
Well i just saw that Wubi thing at http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/install-ubuntu-with-windows. i guess intalling ubuntu will be much easier using this. Sorry i answered my own question :P – Lucas May 05 '13 at 16:08

Installing Ubuntu on another Hard Drive Disk (F:)

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