From: houston@norton.geog.mcgill.ca (Lawrence Houston) Subject: Re: Setting active partition on second hard drive Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 06:44:56 GMT
From article <CDu5EL.qG@acsu.buffalo.edu>, by reczek@acsu.buffalo.edu (Tim Reczek):
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have two hard drives: Westen Digital 340MB as master, Maxtor 130MB
> as slave. I was considering using the 130MB dive to run linux on while
> leaving the 340MB drive solely DOS.
>
> Question: Can I make the linux partion on the 2nd drive the active partition?
>
> I tried to do this with fdisk (with both drives having DOS partitions) and
> it said that only partions on the first drive can be made active.
There are only few of the "fancier" Boot Managers which allow booting from
Active Partitions on a Second Hard Drive (I do not believe Linux's fdisk
has the potential). What I have successfully done on my system (with its two
SCSI Hard Drives), is install Linux (Slackware 1.0.3) on the second drive
(leaving the DOS and Interactive Partitions on the first drive untouched)!
I am restricted to booting from the LILO Boot disk which Slackware's
Setup Program generated for me. Sounds like your's are IDE Drives, I do not
know if the same will work (but we are planning to attempt the same thing
on an IDE based based machine next week).
> Does this mean that I am unable to run linux on the 130MB drive because
> I can't make it the active partion (short of physically swapping the drives).
>
> Admittedly I haven't delved much into linux, so I don't even know if this
> makes a difference. But if I have to have the linux partition on the first
> drive (the 340MB), I'll have to backup and repartion the whole thing (yuck!).
> I'd really prefer to keep my O.S's on separate drives if possible.
>
> Any info is appreciated.
If you try the LILO Boot Disk "trick" can you let me know your results. We are
planning to do the same with a 210 Meg WD and a 200 Meg Maxtor (both IDE, the
Maxtor will be the slave, DOS is already on the WD)?
> Thanks,
>
> Tim
Lawrence Houston,
McGill University.