Ubuntu Installation 12.04.4

Question

I have 2 separate Hard Drives. One is SATA the other IDE. Windows 7 is installed on SATA drive and the other is a blank IDE hard drive. How can I install Ubuntu on the second IDE hard drive without removing or overwriting Windows 7 installed on the 1st SATA drive? I want to be able to dual boot between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04.4

Answer 1

If this is a Desktop(seems so from your question)

Then the simplest way is to detach the SATA drive while installation(if you can do it safely) otherwise

While installing ubuntu select the option

something else option

Then you will see the partition menu as follows

If you have connected two hard disks then you will see two devices as /dev/sda /dev/sdb. You will have to identify which is the blank IDE drive. It is very simple..the one which has some ntfs partitions on it is a SATA drive. while the one which shows completely unallocated space is your blank IDE drive. You can select the blank IDE drive and make partitions on it and then below in

Device for Bootloader installation

select your IDE hard disk(/dev/sda or /dev/sdb) Once installation is complete you can restart your computer and at the time of booting just go to BIOS and select which hard disk you want to boot from. IF you select your SATA HDD then it will directly boot to windows, if you select your IDE HDD then it will show you grub menu(if it is not hidden :p)

Hope this helps!