1

Hello can I install Linux by downloading the iso, then copying it on my 2nd hard drive, then booting on the 2nd hard drive ?

I believe I have something to do, since the 2nd hardrive is "controlled" by Windows (though Windows is on my 1st hdd).

Vincent
  • 29
  • 1
  • 4

4 Answers4

1

Vincent,

If image which you are going to download is ready to be used and requires just unpacking - yes - you can do so. If the image contains installation files - you will have to perform the installation procedure to get your Linux working. It depends on the image you get.

Windows does not "control" your second drive. It just provides you with means of accessing it (reading/writing data).

terdon
  • 52,568
  • 14
  • 124
  • 170
VL-80
  • 4,475
  • 2
  • 28
  • 38
1

You can do this easily using Unetbootin.

Select your ISO and hard drive in Unetbootin, and click OK to write the contents of the ISO on to your hard disk. After rebooting, you will be offered whether to boot into Linux or Windows. From here, you can run it in live mode and install it.

Do note that Unetbootin does not work for a few Linux distros like Slitaz and Puppy Linux.

test
  • 1,426
  • 2
  • 12
  • 14
0

Most distros now-a-days, you can simply bit copy the iso on to a drive and it will boot. If you have dd (linux or probably mac) you can do the following

DISCLAMER this will completely wipe all data from your drive, so consider yourself warned. 

sudo dd if=distro.iso of=/dev/sdx # x is the letter of your drive
# you can tell which is your drive by checking mount
mount -l # lists mounted filesystems.

beware that in the mount command, you will see something like sdx1 mounted but you want to use: of=/dev/sdx if you are running from a mac, disk utilities has a way to burn images to disks, i believe you can burn an iso to a flash drive from there as well.

Once you are done, you will need to go into fdisk and remove all partitions from the disk you copied the disk onto. then you can repartition. Gparted is graphical tool for doing this from linux as well.

Mobius
  • 273
  • 1
  • 5
  • Could you explain that last paragraph a bit? _After_ copying the image to the drive, you want to remove all partitions? What will that do exactly apart from deleting the data you just copied? – terdon Jul 17 '13 at 13:11
  • so if you burn the iso to your harddrive, basically you overwrite the partition table, and you have what looks like a cd/dvd/drive formatted in udf. in order to be able to use the harddrive again, once you have completed your install, you will need to rebuild the partition table. This method should only be used if you really really can't find a flashdrive and if you have a disk you don't mind wiping. – Mobius Jul 17 '13 at 13:28
  • Ah, once you have completed the install. Sorry, your answer does not make that clear, I thought you meant after the `dd` is finished. – terdon Jul 17 '13 at 13:50
-2

No, ISOs can't be run from a harddisk. However, you can often transform an ISO image to a USB stick, and boot from that. For example, see http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

JvO
  • 913
  • 5
  • 14
  • So I have to get an USB stick ? No way to do it straight even if I have two hdds ? – Vincent Jul 17 '13 at 01:27
  • Vincent, they provide you with [Windows installer](http://wubi-installer.org/) – VL-80 Jul 17 '13 at 01:31
  • 3
    -1, who says they can't? You can set your bootloader to boot from an ISO on the hard drive. See, for example, [here](http://superuser.com/q/154133/151431). – terdon Jul 17 '13 at 01:40
  • @Nikolay wubi is _not_ the same as installing to your hard drive, it essentially runs a virtual machine that runs linux. – terdon Jul 17 '13 at 02:15