Dualboot Linux on 2nd HDD

hello all. I have an M17X R4 with currently only one hdd. I have another spare drive approx. 100gb that I would like to put in the R4 and install ubuntu on. Ideally I would like to dualboot ubuntu and Windows, with each OS having its own hdd. Is this possible? Searched around and havnt really come up with anything definitive. Any suggestions, links, or other help is greatly appreciated.

 

Man.. I haven't even tried but..

Maybe this? Install Windows 7 with just one HDD in the laptop, then remove the HDD, install ubuntu on the other one and re-insert the HDD with Windows 7.

This way you should be able to "manually" boot to the OS you want, by pressing F12 at startup and choosing which HDD you want to boot from.

 

yea thats kinda what i was thinking, since there would be no way to traditionally dualboot since each OS has its own hdd. Are there or have there been troubles installing linux as 2nd OS and dualbooting on AW laptops? What little I have been able to find in the ubuntu forums tells me that some people may experience some problems. Maybe your solution is the ideal route as I wouldnt be dualbooting in the traditional sense but specifying on startup what hdd t point to. I think I will dig around a little more and may try this. Will post back in a few days in case anyone else may go looking for something like this.

 

I played with ubuntu on my machine for a while, but could never find working AMD drivers and I got sick of the desktop lagging.

 

well that just sucks to find out. You would think that with Steam coming over to linux there would be a push for the video card vendors to publish working video drivers for linux. I found linux drivers for nvidia mobile cards so hopefully that will do the trick.