You could have just unplugged the other hard drive, installed Ubuntu on one of them. Then connect the other one up, and chances are, if it's on master, then it's going to load how it used to normally. Then, to load up Ubuntu, you can boot from the CD that you installed it with; I believe there's an option to load Ubuntu from another hard drive, though I'm not 100% on that, but it was something along those lines.

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Yuour problem isnt that you used more than one harddrive. I have three (3) hard drives installed in my computer and it has never caused any problems with my Linux installations. I remember I once ran a total of five (5) Operating Systems (Windows XP Professional x86, Windows Vista Ultimate x86, PCLinuxOS, Mandiva Linux and Ubuntu) and all these OSes were running without any problems. I only had to remove the Linux Operating Systems because I was lacking space in my 240GB HDD space (you might not believe that).

During installations, each of the operating systems you install on your hard drive(s) and/or partitions place a boot loader (boot manager in windows) in your Primary Hard Disc's Primary partition boot sector. that means that assuming that you are already running Windows XP Professional which you installed on partition 1 (assuming that is your primary partition on your HDD 1), Windows XP has already placed its own boot loader in there that enables it to boot and access the informations installed on your HDD. Now, when you later decide to install other OSes, these ones will attach their boot loaders to the same boot partition where Windows XP has placedd its own. This way, it is possible for your computer to access the same boot loader and you will have a choice of selecting which Operating system you wanna boot before you finally boot your computer.

Linux operating systems use the grub boot loader to access your hard drive. i have experienced your type of proble in my previous escapades with Linux installations. To make the installation simpler for you, do this:

Find and download a hard disc utility, preferably one that enables you to create and edit partitions on your hard disc (acronis disc director is recommended). Install and launch your HDD utility. partition your HDD(s) into any number of your choice and format it using EXT2 file system of EXT3 file system for the Linux partitions. Make sure that you dont tamper with the Partition that is carrying the bootloader in the sense that you should not modify the starting sector of this particular partition as this will most likely mess up the boot sector and that is bye bye to every operating system you have in there.

Restart and insert your Linux Installation CD and make sure that computer has been configured to boot from your CD/DVD drives.

Boot into your Linux Life CD (as most of the newer Linux OSes now come in Life CDs including Ubuntu) and start the installation process. Ubuntu doesnt take much time to finish its installation. And it automatically installs its boot loader into your prmiary partition's bootsector unlike some other linux distributions like Mandriva and PCLinuxOS which will ask where you want the boot loader to be installed. After the installation, reboot and everything should be fine now.

I hope that solves your problem pal.

Please pardon my double posting and delete the 2nd post. it was not a deliberate post. It was due to slow internet connection and browser timeout. thank you.

 

 

 

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