Fedora 4 & WinXP multi boot on two separate SATA drives

From: ### Coralys.com ### (tiredofspam_at_abolish.now)
Date: 11/05/05 

Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 23:27:26 +0100

Hi,
    I was for great many years (about a decade) a fervent linux fan, that is
until the job market pressure made me succumb to the dark forces. So for the
past 4+ years I have been a 99% Windows user/developer :-) [and to be honest
I don't regret the move].

Although I did many Linux installations (mostly Red Hat) over the years, the
last two where rather traumatic. In particular I am talking about GRUB (I
think its "Grand" name is a bit exagerated) which totally fried my MBR (even
though I had selected NOT to install on MBR). As a result my laptop was
unable to boot either WIndows XP or Linux. It took a great deal of time (and
anger I must say) to scan the net over a modem connection (where I was
visiting they had no broadband) and with some dark magic I managed to
reconstruct my MBR. After those two tragic instances I totally abandoned
Linux.

Anyway, now I am trying to explore Linux again but without the grief of
having my Windows installation blown up by a cryptic loader (GRUB). This is
my configuration (I have not installed yet):

Primary IDE:
    hda: none
    hdb: none
Secondary IDE
    hdc: DVD (re)writter
    hdd: none
Tertiary: (SERIAL ATA)
    sda: 160GB Windows XP Professional (works, and must remain working!)
    sdb: 160GB New disk with HOPEFULLY Fedora Linux

RAM: 512MB (1GB sometime next month). It is a desktop, old laptop with Linux
& Windows is terribly outdated...

Now, I have been playing around with Knoppix 4 (from live DVD) and although
I hate the KDE stuff it automatically configures my system with a working
high-res video (X11), broadband internet (cable), etc. The Knoppix running
from DVD (not installed on my system) and it tells me:

    hdc: CD-ROM/DVD
    sda1: vfat (C: plain FAT32 for data transfer)
    sda5: ntfs (D: WinXP OS) <-- Boot partition
    sda6: ntfs (E: User data)
    sda7: ntfs (F: Multimedia)

And then of course qtgpart does show sdb as unallocated (my new unformatted
SATA drive). For what it seems at least Knoppix sees my SATA drives as SCSI
drives (sd*). The only IDE thing on my system is the DVD recorder.

OK, I was hoping that in the past 3-4 years the thing had matured and grown
out of its problems but I still read things about grup such as "it
confuses/swaps hda/hdb)" "you should use map or it will fry your windows
partition table" and quite frankly I am still very uneasy about installing
this Fedora 4 with Grub and double boot.

What I need:

1. That WinXP remains functioning on its SDA (first SATA) drive
2. That the MBR of the WinXP disk (SDA) remains UNTOUCHED
3. That Fedora Core 4 installs fully on the 2nd SATA drive (SDB)
4. Use the Windows boot loader on SDA to select either WinXP (on SDA 1st
drive) or Fedora (on SDB - 2nd drive)
5. Know whether Fedora would see my SATAs as sd* like Knoppix does

My partition strategy for the Fedora Linux would be:

    #1 PRIMARY - sdb0 /boot 48MB
    #2 LOGICAL/EXTENDED - sdb1 : approx. 12 GB (see below)
            #2.1 sdb5 Swap partition 2GB
            #2.2 sdb6 / 10 GB
    #3 PRIMARY - sdb2 /home 60GB
    #4 PRIMARY (reserved for Windows Virtual server images)

Any ideas, hints, recommendations and experiences you would care to share to
make this comeback as pleasant as possible?

http://www.FocusOnPanama.com/
Editor - WebMaster

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