How to remove a seconderd disk

Secone disk running linux.

[mack]

Last night I decided to set up a duel boot on my HP desktop PC. Because I run windows XP I thought it would have been easier to install linux on a second hard disk to avoid file system problems. I set the PC to boot from cd-rom. started the set up and then manualy altered the partitionng info to allow it to use the entire second hard disk. The installer (Yast from suse) then set up the bootloader (I asume lilo).

I am now getting a little paranoid that the system may be runing a little to warm. I can't confirm this I just think the air coming from the floppy drive hole is a little hotter than it used to be. I decided to remove the second disk and return to my origional comfiguration. When I remove the second disk the bios detects the change and sets the drives up. But when it attempts to boot I get a screen full of...
"01010101010101010101010101010101"

If I place the second disk back in the bios again detects and configures and allows me to boot either OS. How do I remove the boot loader?

Thanks in advance.

Mack.

[marcs]

On Win98, you could boot from a boot disk and execute :

fdisk /mbr

Not sure if that will work for XP.

[mack]

dont think I can run fdisk under xp because it doesnt run dos.

Thanks for the reply though.

Mack.

[dingman]

Does Suse use Lilo or Grub?

If it uses Lilo, you can probably edit /etc/lilo.conf to remove the option of booting into Linux, then run the command 'lilo' as root. It wont exactly remove lilo, but it will make it stop caring about the 2nd hard disk.

Grub probably has a simillar option, but I've never used Grub. Lilo does everything I need, so I haven't felt like learning Grub, and both distros I use regularly still let you choose.

To actually remove a boot loader, the only option I know is to install a diferent one over it. A re-install of Windows would do the trick, since Windows *always* overwrites the boot sector on install, whether it should or not. However, you might not want to re-install XP just to replace the boot loader. I don't know if there's a way to just re-install the boot block in Windows or not.

[marcs]

dont think I can run fdisk under xp because it doesnt run dos.

That's where the Win98 boot disk comes in. That will recreate your MBR but I'm not sure if it will be compatible with XP.

You can problably find a Win98 boot disk online if you don't have one handy.

[mack]

yea it uses lilo.

From the boot set up in suse (yast) it gives an option to remove the lilo. Would this cause both disks to be un-bootable?

Mack.

[dingman]

Would this cause both disks to be un-bootable?

It might. It depends in part on how Lilo was installed, but that would be my first guess. In a typical configuration, you don't want to remove one boot loader without first putting another in its place.

If your /etc/lilo.conf is reasonably short, you might consider posting it. If it's too long for that to be polite, stickying me is OK.

[mack]

Hi again. Sorry I took a while. I Had reboot to access linux then save this to floppy before going back to windows. (only have a winmodem)

boot= /dev/hda
change-rules
reset
read-only
menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg
lba32
prompt
timeout= 80
message= /boot/message

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = linux
root = /dev/hdb3
vga = 791
initrd = /boot/initrd

image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse
label = failsafe
root = /dev/hdb3
vga = 791
initrd = /boot/initrd.suse
append = "ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off"
optional

other = /dev/hda2
label = windows

image = /boot/memtest.bin
label = memtest86

Mack.

[dingman]

Yup. Lilo is installed on the same physical disk as Windows, so if you completely remove it you'll be left with an unbootable system.

If you remove all the image stanzas and the lines for 'prompt' and 'timeout' and re-run lilo, you should get a system that doesn't care if the second hard drive is there or not and will boot Windows automatically.

Doing so will make it impossible to boot Linux in any reasonably straightforward way, and I can't swear that it will work perfectly for Windows. If something goes wrong, you can get back into Linux to put things back the way they were by using an install disk that lets you pass options to the kernel at boot time. (Debian disks allow for this, and I think Red Hat ones do, too.) The option you'd need to get going would be 'root=/dev/hdb3'. At a Lilo prompt that would mean typing something like 'linux root=/dev/hdb3' or 'failsafe root=/dev/hdb3'.

[dingman]

Oh, and when I say delete all the image stanzas, I mean the ones that start with an "image" line. Don't delete the two-line "other" stanza fro Windows. That would be bad. One might even hope that lilo would refuse to install an MBR that didn't have any OSes listed to boot at all.

[mack]

Thank for the great info dingman, helped me out no end :)

Before I try this do you think the two drives might cause a heat problem? Perhaps im just being paranoid?

There was space for the drives and all necasery power and data cables. I think the air passing out is a bit hotter but then I have to think there are two drives now, more heat is inevitable, but could this cause problems?

What do you think?

Mack.

[dingman]

It depends on the case, the fan, how warm the room is, and so forth whether the extra heat from another hard drive will make any noticable difference in the lifetime of the components. I've got an Athlon at home that I actually had to remove a fan from in order to fit an extra hard drive, and there's no sign of problems in the ~2.5 years since then, but it's not a guarantee.