New Hard Drive with Linux

[Doc]

Hey guys,

 

I'm getting a new hard drive soon to add to my computer as a secondary HDD. I'm thinking about trying linux again and have a question.

 

If I install linux on the secondary HDD, how do I use the operating system?

 

Will I simply have to change the change the boot order?

Or will I get some kind of option upon boot like this? (see imgur pics in the thread)

 

http://www.steam-gamers.net/forum/fixed-resolved-problems/51156-linux-help.html

 

The one in the above thread was with one hard drive with each OS on a different partition.

[Dirk]

changing the boot order would work fine. Although there are boot loaders that support choosing between OSs I know if you install linux after windows you can use the linux boot loader to choose windows or linux. But when I did that, it was on a single drive so I am not sure.

[Tweezy]

When you install linux on your secondary HDD the grub loader will come up. It may not have windows on it, but fixing that is easy with this command:

 

update-grub

 

 

[Doc]

When you install linux on your secondary HDD the grub loader will come up. It may not have windows on it, but fixing that is easy with this command:

 

update-grub

 

 

 

changing the boot order would work fine. Although there are boot loaders that support choosing between OSs I know if you install linux after windows you can use the linux boot loader to choose windows or linux. But when I did that, it was on a single drive so I am not sure.

 

Is there also a native Windows boot loader? Or is Linux's GRUB the only one I can use?

[Tweezy]

Is there also a native Windows boot loader? Or is Linux's GRUB the only one I can use?

 

Windows has one, but the Grub one is a lot better (In my opinion)

[MPQC]

Running them both is simple. When I had installed Ubuntu originally, grub came with it just as Tweezy said -> literally just choose which OS I want (defaults to Windows) and poof, works out of the box.

[Harry]

Yeah, it should setup grub automatically when you install it, giving both Windows and your Linux options. In the rare chance it breaks, you'd just need to boot on the LiveCD and try to fix it there (or boot on Windows recovery disk and restore their bootloader, however IIRC Window's bootloader doesn't support Linux).

[Dirk]

Is there also a native Windows boot loader? Or is Linux's GRUB the only one I can use?

 

The windows boot loader might not work with linux and its just plain not as good. Use Grub

[Doc]

OK, I installed Mint 14 and everything is going smoothly. However, GRUB. Still getting used to having to use it, but oh well.

 

My main problem is that I want Windows 7 to be the top (default) OS.

 

grub2 - How do I set Windows to boot as the default in the boot loader? - Ask Ubuntu

 

I took a look at the above article and tried it. Unfortunately for me, I'm not super experienced in command prompt/terminal, but I can get by. I got to the last step. Entering "Windows 7 ... etc." into GRUB_DEFAULT. How do I update GRUB afterwards?

 

What I did after changing GRUB_DEFAULT was open a new tab and typed in "sudo update-grub"

 

EDIT: All I had to do was "Ctrl + O", then update.

[MPQC]

I recommend you change the default grub load time. It drove me insane at the default 30 seconds (I believe it was that), lowered mine down to 5 lol. I tend to turn on my computer and run off to do other stuff and like to come back to it nicely booted.

 

Just me though.