Creating a dual boot system with 2 hard drives

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fireboy1a

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Aug 3, 2015
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I have win 7 pro on the primary hard drive and I have a imaged hard drive as a back up repair hard drive that came whit the system when I bought it from dell. The original windows installed was win 7 home basic but I bought a download to win 7 pro so the primary hard disk isn't exactly like the imaged disk.
my question is if I hooked up the imaged disk drive to my system would it boot up as a dual boot or would it cause a conflict with the primary hard drive I have been using from the beginning?
 
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fireboy1a

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Aug 3, 2015
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I would like to apologize for not responding sooner and providing the info you need to help answer my question. I am a Lt. with the Fire Dept in my home town and we have been fighting some wild land fires over the last week and a half.Here is the info you requested.
I have a Dell XPS 8700 with a intel core I7-4700 3.40ghz (4th gen).
Mainboard - model 0KWVT8 / A02 chipset Z87 / bios version A06
memory - 16gb DDR3
Graphics - AMD Radeon HD 7700 series 1gb memory
If I have left something out please do not hesitate to ask and I will find the info you need and again please accept my apology for taking so long in getting this info back to you.
 
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popatim

popatim

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Most likely Dell did not ship you an image drive but rather its an extra partition on your hdd which contains the image for your factory restore. An image is a compressed copy of a partition or entire disk. Dell does this in case something happens and you need to return the pc to the way it came from the factory

In other words, if you opened up your pc you would only see one harddrive in it.

If you provide the service tag from the sticker on the back, we can know exactly what the specs of the pc Dell shipped you are.
 
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fireboy1a

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Yes there is only 1 hard drive that was shipped inside my computer from Dell, however Dell shipped me a 2nd hard drive 30 days after the delivery of my computer as a warranty provided back up hard drive in case the primary hard drive failed and was salvageable. Which is why I asked if I could use both hard drives for a dual boot system. The first hard drive came with Win 7 Home premium but I upgraded it to Win 7 Pro. The 2nd hard drive which was shipped and received later has the original Windows Win 7 Home Premium on it. Since they are essentially mirror images of each other can they even be used as dual boot system or does one have to have an entirely different version of windows installed on it?
 
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popatim

popatim

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the licensing is for a pc, not the numbers of running installations you have on that pc.
You said you upgraded to pro, was it an in-place upgrade or upgrade edition (which uses your win7home key) or did you purchase say win7 pro (full or oem) and install that ?
 
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fireboy1a

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I did a windows anytime upgrade. I downloaded the upgrade and was issued a new windows Key to enter. That would be an In place upgrade wouldn't it? It was limited to use on only 3 computers.
 
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