[ltp] Re: Ultrabay hard drive

[André Wyrwa]

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Hi,

> I wouldn't be able to boot Windows XP on a USB CD
> drive and install it to the Ultrabay Slim drive?

Not even neccessary. What you can do is remove the internal harddrive
and insert the new harddrive. Insert your CD/DVD drive to the UltraBay
and install WinXP. Then remove the new harddrive from the ThinkPad and
reinstall the original one. Insert the new drive to your UltraBay
harddisk adapter and insert that in the UltraBay. Boot Linux (from your
internal drive) and modify your grub config. Add an entry for the
Windows installation on the other drive. Be aware, though, that Windows
doesn't like booting from a second drive (it actually hates it and hence
reacts quite unpredictably). So it's best to keep it's emotions down by
doing a remapping of the drives in grub. Read the grub manual for
instructions. The idea is simply to turn (hd1) into (hd0) and vice
versa. Once you set all that up it will be possible to boot Windows from
the UltraBay drive.

But as was pointed out before, everytime you need to access a CD/DVD
from Windows, you will have to swap the internal harddrive with the
secondary one.

> Could I just buy another Lenovo hard drive and swap it
> for my current hard drive to install Windows on it. 
> Then switch it back and use the Windows drive in the
> Ultrabay slim?

Doesn't need to be from Lenovo.

> Now it's too late for dual booting.  I would rather
> buy another hard drive than reinstall Linux again. 
> Reinstalling can take a few days to get everything
> back the way I like it.  Actually, takes weeks before
> it is completely configured...

Again, as pointed out by others, you can always backup your whole Linux
install as a big tarball or via cp -a. Might save you money.

André.
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