Thinkpads Forum

If you want to keep your Windows XP partition and all in tact on the HDD drive, physically located inside the machine.

Yet want to use Linux on an Ultrabay 2nd HDD caddy... how are you meant to install Linux on the hard drive in the caddy? You need the CD/DVD to install...

Distro. Fedora

Thanks for your help.

the only way i can think of, is to splurge on an external dvd drive.

Scott

Thanks. Can you do a network install where the image is located elsewhere on the network, but is reachable?

I thought this would be the perfect usage case for the HDD caddy, but it evidently doesn't work.

Maybe I'm missing something here...

You have your original hard drive with Windows XP installed on it.

You want to have a second, bootable hard drive that has Linux (and only Linux) on it.

What is preventing you from swapping the hard drives (take the current one out of the system, put the new one in), booting Linux from the CD and then installing it onto the hard drive? When done, remove the drive with Linux on it and put it into the Ultrabay HD adapter.

Sorry, if this is seems to be a dumb question, but I do not have any experience with Linux distros. My assumption is that all you need to do is boot off the CD and install the OS. Windows can do this, why not Linux?

if you have a bootable floppy drive for the machine, the debian "net install"
can use (3) floppies; tho I've not tried to install on the 2nd disk

or, use ray's idea, and then manipulate your boot loader to recognize both OSes

rkawakami, that's exactly right. I was just trying to avoid having to open up the Thinkpad casing. But yes, otherwise it should work, with some messing around in the GRUB config file for what OS is where.

Can a Thinkpad (T41p) boot from a USB thumbdrive? It says it can boot from USB floppy or USB cdrom. This would solve my problem maybe.

Thanks.

Dead1nside wrote:rkawakami, that's exactly right. I was just trying to avoid having to open up the Thinkpad casing.

I am fairly sure that swapping a hard drive in your T41p is a matter of undoing one screw and sliding out the HDD caddy. Not exactly a surgical operation . That's the way it is in all of my Thinkpads, at least.

The previous posts are correct - you want to put the new HDD in the primary slot, load it up with Linux, move it to the Ultrabay and edit GRUB so that it knows the Linux volume is on the Ultrabay HDD rather than the primary.

Keep in mind that the Ultrabay is the first device on IDE channel 1, while the primary HDD is the first device on IDE channel 0. So what you want to edit is the channel number, not the device number.

Once you have it set up you will use F12 at boot to select the Ultrabay when you want to boot to Linux.

It takes about 30 seconds to pull the primary HDD and install the new one (2 minutes if you've never done it).

Ed Gibbs

Thanks egibbs, the most concise explanation and instruction. Cheers.

If you have a second PC sitting around, you can install GRUB (bootloader) on your primary HD and set up boot images and a TFTP server on the second PC. After this, you can start your thinkpad and tell GRUB to boot from the network, see here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual ... ml#Network

..it's probably not the easiest way to do the install and I never tried it myself.. but I'm sure it's fun if it works. Also, you have to make sure that GRUB supports the ethernet adapter of the thinkpad.

The previous posts are correct - you want to put the new HDD in the primary slot, load it up with Linux, move it to the Ultrabay and edit GRUB so that it knows the Linux volume is on the Ultrabay HDD rather than the primary.

Keep in mind that the Ultrabay is the first device on IDE channel 1, while the primary HDD is the first device on IDE channel 0. So what you want to edit is the channel number, not the device number.

Once you have it set up you will use F12 at boot to select the Ultrabay when you want to boot to Linux.

It takes about 30 seconds to pull the primary HDD and install the new one (2 minutes if you've never done it).

this sounds like a good idea but it will not work. I think you have to do something like this:

1. Install GRUB on your primary HD and make sure that you can boot Windows, the recovery program etc. Also put a boot entry for loading Linux from your secondary HD.

2. Install the HD you want to put in your ultrabay as your primary HD and install Linux on it. There is one thing you should consider though. Linux will see the primary HD as something like /dev/sda (or /dev/hda if you don't have SATA), after you but it into the ultrabay it will become the secondary HD, i.e. /dev/sdb (this is what I assume, I don't have a thinkpad, yet, it could be the other way around). This mean the entries created in /etc/fstab during the Linux installation will be wrong after you switch the HD to the ultrabay. To fix this you will have to edit /etc/fstab, you will have to change entries like
to something like
etc.

3. Reinstall your primary HD and put the other one into the ultrabay, try to boot Linux.

4. Don't worry if it doesn't work immediately, use Knoppix to boot from CD and edit config files (/etc/fstab, grub.conf etc)

Thanks for all your help. I've got to wait until my HDD and ultrabay adapter arrive first. I'll be installing Fedora 7, the hard drives get mounted as /sda etc. now as they're using a new driver.

I will give it a go.

look into PXE booting the net install image (or whatever image you want, actually.) This requires a ethernet "crossover cable" I made one myself pretty easily by looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_c ... le_pinouts
I just made the first one "Two pairs crossed, two pairs uncrossed".
You also need a tftp server, and the files to be booted....i did this for kubuntu fiesty for my friend's laptop (which had no optical drive).
Hope you get it somehow

http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

There is similar installer for Ubuntu, search Google.

I'd recommend GAG as your bootloader, it has no files on disk partitions to worry about.

In case you need boot aide:

http://linux.simple.be/tools/sbm