Installing a new hard drive with two seprate operating systems

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Beagle_Oneism

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Aug 3, 2014
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Titles says it all. I built my PC about 5 months ago and got a new hard drive to go along with it. I installed Windows 7 (Professional, 64-bit) if that helps. So what I planned on doing was removing my hard drive from my old one, and sticking it in my old one. Not only can I retrieve old photos and movies, but a spare 500GB would be cool. The issue I have is... The old one has Windows Vista (Premium, 32-bit) and I'm not sure how this will play out. Will It be fine if I just hook it up? Or do I need to do anything in the bios? Thank you!

~ Beagle
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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An old drive, with an existing OS, will probably not boot from the existing OS, in a whole different PC. If that is what you're looking to do.

The physical drive will work, but do not expect it to actually boot into the original OS.
 
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Beagle_Oneism

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm a bit lost here. So when I go about hooking up my old one (One with Vista) to my motherboard, the one with Win7 will boot up? I don't have to mess around with anything?
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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HDD A has a boot manager and Windows 7 on it.
HDD B has a boot manager and Windows Vista on it.

Both Win 7 and Vista can boot off a second drive. XP and everything before it had to be installed on the first HDD to be bootable.

When you turn on the computer, it will look up which drive is first in the BIOS. it will start the boot manager on that drive, and the boot manager will tell it which OS to start.

If you install HDD B, and HDD A is listed as the first drive in the BIOS, your computer will boot to Win 7. HDD B will be considered the second drive. Based on your description, this is what you want.

If you install HDD B, and HDD B is listed as the first drive in the BIOS, your computer will (try to) boot Vista. HDD A will be considered the second drive. This is probably not what you want.

Since both OSes can boot off the second HDD, it's possible to add the second OS to whichver boot manager the computer decides to use. Start Windows, start msconfig, go to the Boot tab, and add the other OS to the boot menu. When starting the computer up, you will get a menu asking which OS to start upon bootup.

If HDD A is the first drive in the BIOS, the boot manager will already have Win 7 and you would be adding Vista to the menu.

If HDD B is the first drive in the BIOS, the boot manager will already have Vista and you would be adding Win 7 to the menu.

I only bother explaining this in detail because certain manufacturers really skimp on their BIOS (Dell is notorious for this), and often it can be difficult or impossible to assign a particular drive as being the first one. Your computer may insist on booting off the Vista drive when you install it. If that's the case and there's no obvious way to fix it in the BIOS, you can simply add Win 7 to HDD B's boot manager. And just keep in mind it's HDD B that's booting should you do any future upgrades.
 
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