Windows - Install Windows on an eSATA drive
From Knowledge76
Original article by Tal Liron
Contents |
Why Install Windows on an eSATA Drive?
One way to add Windows is to re-partition your hard drive and give Windows its own partition. But, with prices dropping on hard drives, and the availability of eSATA ports on laptops, having Windows on an entirely separate, dedicated hard drive can be a better alternative. It keeps your Ubuntu and Windows installations clean and separate. For laptops, eSATA means that your external drive is just as fast as (with the potential to be even faster than) your internal drive. This tutorial can be easily adapted to both laptops and desktops that have an eSATA port.
Preparation
Make sure you have all your Windows drivers ready and accessible, especially your networking (LAN or WiFi) drivers. Once you have Windows connected to the internet, you can download the rest of your drivers. It is a good idea to put the drivers on a USB key drive or burn them onto a CD.
Next, if you're installing Windows XP, make sure your installation CD is of at least Service Pack 2. Otherwise, the installer will not recognize SATA drives! One way around this is to have SATA drivers handy and make the Windows XP installer use them. You also can "slipstream" the service pack into your installation CD.
Before booting the installer, you should get into your computer's BIOS configuration and change the boot order, making sure that your Windows hard drive is before your Ubuntu hard drive. The reason is that the Windows installer insists on installing the MBR (boot loader) on the first hard drive, and you definitely don't want to spoil your Ubuntu installation with it. There's no reason to, as Ubuntu's GRUB loader can boot a Windows MBR even if it's on another drive. We'll get into that later.
Installing Windows
Once you do that, boot into the Windows installation CD and try your best to enjoy the process. Just make sure you don't make any changes to the partitions of your Ubuntu hard drive!
Once Windows is installed, go back to your BIOS configuration and adjust your boot order so that your Ubuntu hard drive has first priority.
Configuring GRUB
Boot into Ubuntu. Edit your GRUB configuration file:
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
And add something like this to the bottom of the file:
title Windows XP root (hd1,0) map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) makeactive chainloader +1
The "root" definition may vary on your machine. The first digit is the number of the Windows hard disk - it should follow the boot order as configured in your BIOS. So, hd0 should be your Ubuntu drive. The digit after the comma as is the partition number. If you just installed Windows as one partition on the entire drive, it should be 0.
The two "map" definitions are important. They tell GRUB to swap the BIOS order of the drives before booting, so hd1 effectively becomes hd0 and vice versa. This allows the Windows boot loader to believe that it is in the first drive, as it requires.
That's it! Rebooting should allow you to select your operating system in GRUB, and your Ubuntu drive is absolutely devoid of Windows.
