QUESTION :
Okay, I have recently revived an old computer of mine, and had an idea I wanted to explore.
It’s an old Gigabyte board with Intel Pentium 4 @3.0 GHz Prescott processor.
I also have two IDE hard drives.
So here is the idea:
I want to put Win XP on both of the drives to create a dual boot. Simple enough. The catch? One of them (let’s call him the victim) mustn’t know the other one (the parasite) exists. Let me explain further.
What are the conditions that have to be met?
First off, when booting up the computer, it must boot to the victim if nothing is done. If a condition is met, it gives you a choice or boots the parasite directly. The condition can be anything – an USB stick plugged in with some data, a CD-drive in the DVD-ROM, a specific button being pressed, anything really. The another problem that comes into play here is the IDE configuration. Due to the cable length, I can have one of two setups:
IDE1Master: HDD1
IDE1Slave: HDD2
IDE2Master: DVDROM
IDE2Slave: None
or
IDE1Master: DVDROM
IDE1Slave: HDD1
IDE2Master: HDD2
IDE2Slave: None
Be as it may, one of the HDD will always be a slave. I know there is a utility called GNU GRUB, a bootloader. I haven’t had time to mess with it yet, but if I can make it to show the selection screen for a second (long enough for me to hit down arrow and enter) and then go to default boot if nothing selected, that would solve the first issue. Is it possible?
I think that is it. The point is that unaware user of the computer should happily use the victim without having the slightest idea of existance of another Windows installation. The more advanced the user I can fool, the better.
I think if I can hide parasitic installation when booting I can call it a successful project.
What do you think?
ANSWER :
I think you should re-evaluate what it is your trying to achieve. Because I can assure you, that the solution does not involve a second “hidden” hard drive.
If your determined to go this route, and I don’t see why you would be… I’d look into IDE ribbon cable switches. Make it a physical switch in the back of the desktop case. Look up IDE cable select, certain ribbons had a dedicated line for this.