Partition for Dual OS or Multiple hard drive

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ahde

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Aug 24, 2013
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Hello,

As the thread title says it all, is it better to partition a single hard drive for dual os or 2 hard drive dedicated for each os. Assuming its HDD only and all documents and software will be on another dedicated hard drive. Will there be any performance increase/decrease? Also, I have to reinstall all the necessary driver for each os right?

Thank You
 
Solution
USAFRet
Either way will work. I've done it both ways. Currently, one of my laptops is 2 partitions, Win7 and Win8.1

If you have them in two partitions on the same drive, any partition change may screw up both partitions/OS's. An a drive fail may/will kill both.

There is no real performance difference. On individual partitions, once an OS is running, that's it. It uses what it needs. Same as if they were on two different physical drives. The other OS does not matter.
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spankmon

spankmon

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Separate hard drives allow you to keep the most important operating system untainted by any mistakes you might make in partitioning and installing... assuming you know how to use the motherboard's boot menu. Each operating system can have it's own bootloader installed on it's specific drive.

Dual-booting from a single drive is fairly straight-forward and easy but anything more than two OS's should be done on additional drives... in my opinion.

Drivers will need to be installed on each system. Performance will be affected by where the install is physically located on the drive. Systems installed on the inner sectors run quicker that those on the outer sectors but I've never noticed any difference.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Either way will work. I've done it both ways. Currently, one of my laptops is 2 partitions, Win7 and Win8.1

If you have them in two partitions on the same drive, any partition change may screw up both partitions/OS's. An a drive fail may/will kill both.

There is no real performance difference. On individual partitions, once an OS is running, that's it. It uses what it needs. Same as if they were on two different physical drives. The other OS does not matter.
 
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Solution
JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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Here's a suggestion.....put ya primary OS on 128 GB SSD

Then put secondary OS on 128 GB partition of HD w/ SSD data cable unpligged ..... create partitions on drive as you see fit for programs , games, data, backups whatever.

Select which one ya boot from in BIOS at boot time .... one dies, the other still gives access.
 
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ahde

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Aug 24, 2013
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I'm currently not planning to move to SSD yet. But if I do, I would buy 3 ssd each for seperate os and 1 dedicated hard disc for my software ;)
 
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ahde

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Aug 24, 2013
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Thanks!
 
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ahde

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Aug 24, 2013
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Thank you! Now I can just buy 2 hard rive instead of 3 lol :D
 
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