[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] how can you choose which hard drive to boot from?

antonyc@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Antony Chan) (03/18/91)

i have two operating systems (msdos and unix) that i want to
choose between on boot up.  since i also have two hard drives,
it seems to me that the best way to do it is to have each drive
have one operating system on it.  however, i don't know how 
to tell the computer which drive to boot off of.  i looked
around simtel20 already, and i found something called bootany
that says it'll let you boot off of any partition of a hard drive,
but i dont think it mentions being able to boot off a different
drive all together.  now for the questions:

is there a better/more recent version of bootany or
something similar ?

can bootany handle the second drive, or do i have to partition
the first drive? (experimenting with the hard drive partition
tables makes me nervous)

and if bootany can handle the second drive, how?

thanks,
antony chan (antonyc@cobalt.cco.caltech.edu)

ilan343@violet.berkeley.edu (Geraldo Veiga) (03/18/91)

In article <1991Mar18.005647.22254@nntp-server.caltech.edu> antonyc@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Antony Chan) writes:
>
>i have two operating systems (msdos and unix) that i want to
>choose between on boot up.  since i also have two hard drives,
>it seems to me that the best way to do it is to have each drive
>have one operating system on it.

I am using pboot which was posted by Thomas Hoberg
(tmh%gmdtub@tub.UUCP) to comp.sys.sysv386 (or was it alt.sources?).
It has a replacement boot program that is installed in your boot
sector.  At boot time it locates all partitions in your disks and
prints a menu asking which partition to boot from.  I have a single
hard disk, but according to the documentation it should work with two
disks.  In my system I can select between MS-DOS 3.3 and ISC 2.2. 
It works.  I am not sure if it would work with other version of DOS
(or UNIX) without changes.

Another alternative is bootmenu which was posted to comp.sources.misc.
(uunet archive has it).