can i leave xp on the c disk and boot ubuntu from a second (different physical drive) disk

You can certainly install Ubuntu on your second drive without any adverse effects on the first :)

Boot from the LiveCD, then choose Manual disk configuration. The installer will detect the two physical drives, and you would be able to choose the one where you want the installation to proceed.

Also I found this in the Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=605642.

As always, back up your data before beginning installation.

Hope that helps!

I tend to prefer using the ubuntu Cd as a LiveCd and when its booted into Ubuntu from the Cd without making any changes to my system i go up to the top taskbar and click on

System - Adminitration - Partition Editor

which gives a great looking graphical user interface to look at what's going on with my drives. What Windows calls "C:" is usually called "sda1" in linux and your drive "E:" should be "sda2". you should be able to see they are both quite full of yellow representing how full of data they are. In the top-right hand corner is a button that acts as a drop-down list of all the physical drives on your machine. It should be labelled something like "/dev/sda 8Gb" (mine is anyway), changing it to "sdb" should sow your "D:" as "sdb1"

i would use this gparted to prepare the drive by making a Primary linux-swap of 2xRam and a Primary ext3 filling the rest for Ubuntu. Note that Windows tends to make partions "Logical" and puts them inside "Extended Partitions" which causes everything to slow down. Primary Partitions are much better although it's less of an issue for partitions that are only going to hold data.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
Note that some of the advice in this second link is a bit irrelevant as you'll be putting Ubuntu on your Slave Drive rather than your Master Drive but Ubuntu can cope with that easily. hopefully when it rewrites the Mbr on your Master Drive it'll help fix the booting troubles it sounds like you're having with Windows. The Grub-boot-loader and the previous one called "Lilo" both beat Windows flaky boot-loaders and many people use them just for booting into Windows, without installing linux at all!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

ooops, i got a bit muddled. in your system

C: = sda1
D: = sdb1
E: = sda2
G: = sdb2

I think? Note that if you do delete D: & G: and setup linux partitions then Windows wont be able to see them at all. When you next boot into Windows it'll be all confused and might say things like "found new hardware" as it tries to change the labelling from E: to D: and then again when it tries to figure out about the cd/dvd drive. With Xp or earlier that should be fine, it's a lot more robust than Vista. With Vista you'll need to look at the advice halfway down the Dual-boot page, that should work then.

To make life easier for Windoze i would probably just delete G: and the extended partition it's in and use 15Gb for Ubuntu and 2Gb for linux-swap, putting the swap first so it acts as a buffer between Windows and Ubuntu. Then i would keep most of my data on the Windows side even though ntfs is a lot less robust than ext3 - but at least then the Windows could read/write to the data too.

Linux is great at offering so many different ways. I'm sure there are ((1 + linux-users) x 2) ways that people will argue for as "the best way" of setting something like this up ;) Ultimately there is only one right way and that's your own.

Good luck and welcome to linux-land, especially the Ubuntu corner :)
Regards from
Tom :)

Err the short answer to the title of this question is "Yes"

What works for me is to swap the discs, making the main disc secondary and the secondary the main (even if it is not imaged or does not work). Then I booted up on the live CD. You will be able to see the secondary disc from Linux, and can see and copy files on it, although you will not be able to modify any of those files or make any other changes on it.

Then when you install Linux, you just install on the main - empty disc. Nothing will be changed on your secondary Windows disc. When you reboot and the GRUB loader comes up, hit ESCAPE to bring up the boot choices. The choice at the bottom will be Windows and you can boot into it just like normal, and the Linux disc will be available. When you Boot into Linux, then once again you can see and copy all the Windows files, and you have the option of booting back into Windows when you need to.

To learn about swapping the discs, look for instructions for setting up your hard drives for finding out how to set the jumpers and which connector to put it on. The main disc is always on the end of the cable, and the secondary is the other, second connector. Jumper information can be found on the vendors website, if its still there, and elsewhere on the Internet if not.

I like this way of making it easy to swap the physical drives back round to make Windows easy to boot back into - almost as though nothing had happened ;)
Thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

PS this is quite an old question already so it's good see people still adding to it :)

Back in 2003 I had no idea what Ubuntu was, so this is a new learning curve for me. I'm getting up to the point of actually being able to contribute. I think I will post a question of getting cheap modems (linmodems, actuall) running on EdUbuntu. I take donated computers and set them up as EdUbuntu to give to students in our school that cannot afford computers, and EdUbuntu is the version I want, but getting inexpensive modems working on it has proven almost impossible.
Thanks for the response.
BobT

--- On Tue, 5/12/09, Tom <email address hidden> wrote:
From: Tom <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: [Question #63673]: can i leave xp on the c disk and boot ubuntu from a second (different physical drive) disk
To: <email address hidden>
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2009, 8:01 PM

Question #63673 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/63673

Tom proposed the following answer:
I like this way of making it easy to swap the physical drives back round to
make Windows easy to boot back into - almost as though nothing had happened ;)
Thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

PS this is quite an old question already so it's good see people still
adding to it :)

--
You received this question notification because you are a direct
subscriber of the question.

Hi :)

Just wondered if you have solved this problem yet or are you still having troubles? If you still need help then try re-posting the question in here when you are ready to try working through any suggestions
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

or else post the question on a more general linux forum such as
http://www.linuxquestions.org

I hope all is going well
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Tom wrote:
> Your question #63673 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/63673
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> Just wondered if you have solved this problem yet or are you still having troubles? If you still need help then try re-posting the question in here when you are ready to try working through any suggestions
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion
>
> or else post the question on a more general linux forum such as
> http://www.linuxquestions.org
>
> I hope all is going well
> Good luck and regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
right now I am having other issues like 'no job'
but i am currently thinking of actually just building a linux box and
avoiding all the pain.................so i haven't had a chance to even
try out the dual boot thing at all
however to my question i received at least 6 replies which is
amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the linux community is light years ahaead of
anyone!!!!!!!!!1

thank you and one day i will let yuo all know what way i ended up
going with

ken inman

Hi :)
Glad to hear you're happy with us. If you have any kind of old machine that can power up as far as the bios stage then you should be able to boot into a linux. It's easier if you have a cd drive that works but there are other options such as using a usb stick. A handy hints page here ...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD
This should help you recognise the bios stage. More importantly it shows you how to run a "LiveCd session" which doesn't need hard-drives at all but does give you a working desktop, hopefully. It's kinda like a demo version but should be able to connect to your network and might help try to find local wireless/wiifi stuff if you have the hardware for it. The "Documents" & "Desktop" (etc) folders forget everything you save there as it's just running from the Cd but a LiveCd session can be forced into saving stuff to hard-drives with a bit of prodding ;)

Most distros (versions of linux and other *nix's are called distros, ubuntu is just one linux distro among many) have this LiveCd functionality. If you are using an old machine then it might be worth trying Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
If you have trouble getting hold of a linux cd then there are usually options for getting one delivered by post, with Ubuntu there's a free service called ShipIt. If you do have access to a machine that you can download and burn a cd on but have extreme time constraints then try getting sliTaz
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz
as it's only about 50Mb but gives a good LiveCd session, which might help you use your own old machine to download and burn something a bit heftier, like Wolvix or Ubuntu. Most different distros look quite a bit different but often use the same packages and much the same ways of doing things. Using one helps you learn skills useful in another ;) DistroWatch is a popular and good place to compare different versions of linux, you'll see from those two links that it has back-pages laid out in a very easy to comapre style, you'll also find their home-page is a bit like a magazine with articles giving updates on the latest developments and stuff :)

So you don't need to get a new computer, as long as you have something that kinda works(ish), preferably with a working Cd drive, then you should be able to try out linux. Setting up a dual-boot on old hardware is a good way to learn how to but running even without installing onto hard-drives at all is a good experience worth trying.

Hardware manufacturers like trying to make things difficult for linux users so it's usually worth trying a LiveCd session (which can be done from a usb-stick) to see how easily it's going to work. Sometimes if one distro doesn't work easily then another distro will. Ubuntu and Wolvix work on the largest range of hardware, Fedora seems to have less range but does seem to work on some machines if Ubuntu doesn't. Currently it seems worth going for nVidia graphics cards because they work better with games and things that were written for Windows, if there's any chance of getting these programs working (usually there is a way, but it's not always easy). Ati have a lot of catching up to do unless you get one in their latest range, the 4000 series, which i haven't tried yet and although they are a bargain they still are outside my price range. For sound cards it's currently worth avoiding expensive cards, especially avoid 'CreativeLabs', eg Sound Blaster cards etc. Again this is hopefully only a temporary problem and hopefully they will start supporting linux at some point in the near future, perhaps with a few of us prodding at them and explaining why we aren't buying their products. One good OpenSource driver would cover all the different linux's and Mac too for a whole range of their stuff. At least with Ati they have given crucial info to help linux developers write their OpenSource driver for them, probably preferable to getting Windows programmers to try to do the job ;) Anyway for sound cards these links might help
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsSoundCards
(by brand, list)
http://alsa.opensrc.org/Alsa_Preferred_Soundcards
(ALSA preferred cards -- basically, this is what Linux/Ubuntu is using to "run the sound out of your speakers" like Windows is using a driver)

For a good look at what hardware works well with linux you might want to take a look at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SupportedArchitectures
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/i386/hardware-supported.html
and navigate from there. Another good place to get answers, but a more general linux forum, not just about Ubuntu, is at
http://www.linuxquestions.org

Mostly though pretty much anything works well and easily, especially with Ubuntu and Wolvix. Dell, Asus and a few others supply some of their machines with a linux preinstalled, although this is often restricted to a certain range, for example the Asus Eee Pc netbooks although Dell's tend to use Ubuntu on their machines ;)

I hope something here helps you use what you already have to get some joy from linux with a minimum of expense!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)