two OS on two sata hdds. is it possible?

cambridgew10

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Oct 15, 2007
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hi there first post here...

im upgrading my pc and i need a bit of heLP!

at the mom i got a sata hdd where i have a dual boot with xp and vista. (my hdd config= c,d,e,f) (lets say c=xp and f=vista)
I want to delete vista on this drive coz i want to install it on a new drive.

1) how exactly do i do that? i dont want to simply format the partition where vista is on now coz i wanna try to merge that partition to the other 1(nn primary) that i have on my hdd. So i want to try to merge f and e. is it possible?

2) i want to fresh install vista on the new sata hdd. do i just plug in the drive and boot with the cd in and start the set up or shall i start the setup within xp?

3) considering all the above went well, will i then be able to choose witch os to boot from at start up? like im currently doing with my dual boot? i obiosly want to keep xp on the other drive.

i hope i was clear enough and all help will be appreciated.

Thanks
 

Grimmy

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Feb 20, 2006
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Boot up in XP, then control panel, and then administrator tools.

Start up computer management. From there click on disk management. From there you should be able to see your HD's with partitions. If I understand you correctly, you should be able to delete the F and E partitions (right clicking on them). Then reformat to make one partiton that would become the new E drive.

You will/might need to also edit the boot.ini. Which is done by:

Right click on My Computer, properties.
Then go to the advance tab.
Look for startup and recovery, and click on settings.

From there, click on edit for startup options to remove any OS that should be there anymore.

Hope that helps.
 

srtboy

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Aug 13, 2006
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Boot your computer in to Windows XP.

Ensure you have the Vista DVD in the DVD drive.

Go to Start and Run. Type in "d:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force"” (without quotes, plus replace d: with the drive letter of your Vista DVD).

Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone.

Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed.

Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on your XP root folder

To merge partition use partition magic.
 

cpburns

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Aug 28, 2006
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you want to be very careful getting rid of vista. it installs a custom bootloader that blows away the default loader that xp uses. this is last i knew anyway.

my situation was similar. i had 2 drives, both had 2 partitions, 4 partitions total. C: and D: were on hdd0, and E: and F: were on hdd1. i had xp installed to D:, and i then installed vista to F:. my only problem was that i attempted to use PartitionMagic8 to resize D: and give xp more room. when i did this, xp became unloadable. completely. no hope. vista loaded fine from the end of hdd1 tho, and it could still access D: for me to tool around in the file structure and xp's boot.ini.

i don't know how possible it is to just blow vista away as i believe that it inserts a pointer program into the boot sector of the drive which just links it to the bootloader in the vista partition.

as far as vista's bootloader goes, i've seen it offer an option to boot to an older OS, which if used will run the bootloader that xp had stored in the boot sector.

in any case, you want to be very careful about this, and be prepared to lose both OSes. i'm assuming your data is all safely on those middle two partitions as it is.

the fact that the drive interfaces are sata shouldn't matter.

also, your best bet for putting the space currently used by F: into E: would be to resize the partition from vista. i think it can do that? it should be able to let you delete the old F: and extend E: to fill the rest of the space.
 

cambridgew10

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Oct 15, 2007
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hi there and thanks for your reply...question:

i dont have the vista dvd for the 1 im using now and that i want to delete,but i just bought vista ultimate on dvd witch should arrive shortly. can i use the new vista dvd to delete the old 1 using the metod you just explained?