Multi-boot with two hard drives

The hard drive of my old desktop broke down a few days ago (kept whistling all the way). I guess that was because my wife never did a defragmentation or cleaning and put tons of Korean films in it. I got to a store called factorydirect.ca and purchased a maxtor 100G IDE hard drive for 35 bucks. After I installed a new copy of windows xp and Debian 5 on the new hard drive with the old drive hooked up, it is quite interesting to see that the original system can boot up now.

The following is the grub file for multi-boot for a pc with two physical hard drives. It might be useful for my future use when there are two hard drives.

One thing i should mention is that my pc can not host two hard drives on a single IDE cable (no matter how i set the jumpers on them), but it works fine with one hard drive and one dvd-rom hooked by a single cable.

Another thing is that now that the hard drive is actually not broken, the biggest possibility of the cause is that the power supply (250 W) is unstable with two high capacity hard drives. It happened a couple of times when i pressed down the start button, the pc was on but there was no display on the screen. However, it now works fine after I set the low power mode in the BIOS.

# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
# grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
# grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
# and /usr/share/doc/grub-legacy-doc/.

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM.
# Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case,
# the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
# WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not change this entry
# to 'saved' or your
# array will desync and will not let you boot your system.
default 3

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting
# the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 15

# Pretty colours
color cyan/blue white/blue

## password ['--md5'] passwd
# If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive
# editing control (menu entry editor and command-line) and
# entries protected by the command 'lock'
# e.g. password topsecret
# password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/
# password topsecret

#
# examples
#
# title Windows 95/98/NT/2000
# root (hd0,0)
# makeactive
# chainloader +1
#
# title Linux
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro
#

#
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after
# AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
##markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the
##default options below

## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
## kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro
## kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro
# kopt=root=/dev/hda3 ro

## default grub root device
## e.g. groot=(hd0,0)
# groot=(hd0,2)

## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. alternative=true
## alternative=false
# alternative=true

## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. lockalternative=true
## lockalternative=false
# lockalternative=false

## additional options to use with the default boot option,
# but not with the alternatives
## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5
# defoptions=quiet

## should update-grub lock old automagic boot options
## e.g. lockold=false
## lockold=true
# lockold=false

## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option
# xenhopt=

## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot
## option
# xenkopt=console=tty0

## altoption boot targets option
## multiple altoptions lines are allowed
## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options
## altoptions=(single-user) single
# altoptions=(single-user mode) single

## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst
## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the
## alternative kernel options
## e.g. howmany=all
## howmany=7
# howmany=all

## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option
## e.g. memtest86=true
## memtest86=false
# memtest86=true

## should update-grub adjust the value of the default
# booted system can be true or false
# updatedefaultentry=false

## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options
## can be true or false
# savedefault=false

## ## End Default Options ##

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-686
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686 root=/dev/hda3 ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-686 (single-user mode)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686 root=/dev/hda3 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below
# from the Debian ones.

title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer
# for a non-linux OS on /dev/hda1

title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (New)
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer
# for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hdc1
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (Original)
root (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1