[SOLVED] Need help with installing 2nd drive

That's what I do.

I just had a slight question as to whether Linux would install properly on a usb connected drive enclosure or would he need to hook it directly into the desktop and install and then put it back into the usb device. Either way the other Windows disk needs to be removed.

The only reason that we're discussing it this much is because he can only hook up 1 hdd at a time (1 sata connector)

To answer Charles question about installing Linux on a usb flash drive or thunmb drive, no grub does not get installed, but if you are worried about it, the same thing applies. Take out the windows drive.

You brought up the flash drive, yodap. What the deal is, I didn't want to chance screwing up my desktop anymore, so I decided to try it out on my laptop. I've already explained what happened after that, my laptop is dependent on that drive to be there now. I'll fix that. Being that Vista SP2 is the last OS on it, I'll pop in the disc and do a startup repair, and hope it works. If not, I'll reinstall and be done with it. There has been a lot of information given to me the past two days, and I'm trying to take it in. At the same time, I had to clean install Ultimate today, I found out that I couldn't configure my restore point space, there was something missing. Remember, at first I used the image that I created with Macrium to restore it on here. I've done a few system recoveries that were already in place with Windows backup & Macrium, but never (until two nights ago) restored to another disc (except the recovery partition). That problem is now fixed. Now, for the hard drive. Forget the flash drive, I don't want to run an OS that way. I need to study a few of the posts made on this thread, and plan some course of action. There is a lot to think about here, and I thank all of you who have contributed. I've worked on this desktop for three days now, and am getting wore out. I just need to go over everything again, and go from there.

OK, the hard drive has been removed, Linux Mint has been installed on the other one, and is now updating. This process of updating is supposed to be faster than this, on Thursday, I got in internet speed upped from 1.5 (Road Runner Lite) to 7.0. That's a huge increase! But a couple of weeks ago, my modem was giving trouble, they said that the particular batch was bad (a familiar story), so they came back and all they had was a older modem. My internet speed is way up one minute, way down the next. It's not my computers, because they both react the same to the signal. I'm calling them back out here tomorrow. I want a new modem, like the one I had (Netgear wireless). My download speed is supposed to be around 600KB/sec, before that it was 180KB/sec, right now it's running 43KB/sec. I only had to pay an extra $12 for that extra speed, but what good is it now? Anyway, as soon as this OS finishes updating, I'll reinstall my regular drive, and hope for the best. I know how to select between boot devices.

Thanks to you all, I got it done! yodap & Nibiru pointed me in the right direction. It wasn't said, but I just assumed it best to have it turned off and unplugged while I'm in Windows, I don't want it to try to install itself. It's really simple to choose which device from which to boot on here, just press ESC at startup, and the boot options are listed. I'm glad I'm finally setup the way that I want, for now. This was beginning to get frustrating to me. Now, all that I have to do is call Time Warner and tell them to get their act together.