Hi John,
Thanks for the information. A lot of which I don't understand; however, last evening my wife came home after Christmas shopping and told me that she saw a computer for $800 which was equal to the one we bought for our daughter two years ago for $3,000. She suspects, and I agree with her, that next year, when I had intended on buying a machine for myself, that we could buy a machine superior to what my daughter has for $800. In that case, my wife could have the new one and I'll just take hers.
It's so great that computer prices are falling so quickly.
Thanks again to you and to all for the help on this question.
Thanks,
Walt
-----Original Message-----
From: John [mailto:red@computerdatasafe.com.au]
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 5:48 PM
To: 'BLINUX-LIST@REDHAT.COM'
Subject: Re: Swapping hard drives
On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Weber Walter M wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I don't see anyway I'll be able to buy a PC next year for home use; so, I
> wonder whether this idea will work?
>
> My wife has a PC at home, with Windows on it. Can I move the current hard
> drive to another drive bay and have a new hard drive installed in the
> original's place, having Linux installed on it plus a program launcher which
> offers the choice of booting up with Linux or Windows? If my wife chooses
> Windows, wouldn't the launching program boot from the old C drive which
> would now be given another letter? In other words, there's nothing on the
> current C drives which irrevocably mark them as C, is there?
Windows AFAIK insists on being on the first drive on the first IDE
controller, and it also insists on being installed on a primary
partition. This means you can't do exactly what you say.
What you can do is install a second hard drive, either as the second
drive on the first controller or (depending on the BIOS) on the second
or even an added IDE adaptor. You can install Linux there and run it
without any drama.
When you install Linux, install grub or lilo on the MBR of the Windows
disk, and configure it to boot either Windows or Linux.
I suggest you actually have a friend who knows Linux help you because
the friend will understand how to do this.
A good alternative, if the case allows it, is to get a couple of disk
caddies. You install a carrier in the case, and mount the disks in the
inserts. The result is a bit like drawers in a filing cabinet, but
easier to pull one out, push another in. This way, the Windows computer
is completely unaffected by the Linux computer, and if you want to
install Linux yourself, it may take a while but you will know you're not
going to damage the Windows computer (provided you have the right hard
drive installed).
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