Having two HDD

[anuk07]

I have currently a IDE hard drive......and planning to have another but SATA hard disk....

so my question is if i will keep xp on IDE and win 7 on SATA.........will this work ?

and how i will then switch the OS as required............





srry bad english!!!

 

[anuk07]

 

[anuk07]

is any thing wrong in my question???? 35 views no answer yet....

 

[anuk07]

please any one give me answer.........

 

[anuk07]

u know it is feeling bad 65 views no answers, is my question is illegal?

lol................

 

[WyomingKnott]

u know it is feeling bad 65 views no answers, is my question is illegal?

lol................

Nah, just boring.

There are at least three ways to do this. I will present from simplest to, in my opinion, best. In any case, there are no issues with "master" and "slave" settings between the disks, just in case you were going to ask that.

■Attach the SATA drive to the system, boot from the Win7 DVD, and install Win7 to the SATA drive. Let the install procedure do the partitioning. When you boot, you will see a boot menu that will let you choose (interesting typo, I typed "cheese") between the two OSes.

Why I do not like this: The Master Boot Record and Boot Loader, the first steps of the boot after BIOS, will continue to reside on the older drive. You will not be able to boot directly from the SATA drive if the IDE drive dies or you decide to abandon XP.

■Attach the SATA drive to the system and detach the IDE drive. Boot from the Win7 DVD, and install Win7 to the SATA drive. Re-attach the IDE drive. You will have to choose which OS to boot in the BIOS, by setting which drive should be first in the boot sequence. You can usually select another during boot by pressing the appropriate key, usually F8, to pop up a boot menu at the end of BIOS.

Why I don't like this: The BIOS is not the most convenient place to choose a boot. Changing hardware frequently causes the boot order to change. Why I do like this: Either drive can be booted directly without the other.

■Proceed as above and then use EasyBCD to modify your Win7 boot. Follow the directions with EasyBCD to create a boot menu entry that points to your XP drive.

Why I like this: A nice boot menu that defaults to what I do 95% of the time. Why I don't like this: It leaves the IDE drive bootable, and sometimes having two bootable drives creates confusion.

Edit: Be patient on the forums. Sometimes the people who know your topic best are on vacation, or simply resting, and you may not get an answer for days. It's a slower medium than Instant Messenger or Twitter or whatever.

 

[anuk07]

yeah its boring for a guy having "high knowledge calories" like you!! i am thinner in this manner....


1.

Why I don't like this: The BIOS is not the most convenient place to choose a boot. Changing hardware frequently causes the boot order to change. Why I do like this: Either drive can be booted directly without the other.

that means the other hard drive which is not used for booting is then can not be used for storing data???

2. Here what is mean by

"it leaves the IDE drive bootable, and sometimes having two bootable drives creates confusion."

I guess it doesn't let you bored this time.......

 

[WyomingKnott]

1) Not what I was driving at, but true. If you intend to eliminate XP entirely, you could re-task that drive for data. I was talking about if you want to be able to boot both systems for a long time to come. Each drive can be booted even if the other is corrupted. In that case, I would store my data either on a third drive, or on a separate partition on the newer SATA drive, keeping OS and data as separate as possible.

2) I have had problems where, when I have two independently bootable drives on the same system, sometimes the default boot changes without my intending it to. That's the confusion: I expect it to boot off the SATA drive, and instead the next time I boot up it boots off the IDE drive. This has usually happened because I have connected an external SATA drive and my BIOS reconfigured the boot order as a result.

"Just boring" was an attempt at humor, in comparison to your "illegal." No criticism was intended.

 

[anuk07]

on your 1st Answer

1) Not what I was driving at, but true. If you intend to eliminate XP entirely, you could re-task that drive for data. I was talking about if you want to be able to boot both systems for a lo..................wer SATA drive, keeping OS and data as separate as possible.

Can i do this---> Installing both OS on IDE Hard drive on different seperations......select this hard drive for booting...
...then selecting the OS( i dont know how actually?).........and the SATA hard disk used for data storage and usage....

can this will be possible....?




I am not typing last lines as criticism either.........

you are helping me a lot thanx for wasting your time on me....

 

[WyomingKnott]

Can i do this---> Installing both OS on IDE Hard drive on different seperations......select this hard drive for booting...

You could, but the IDE drive is slower than the SATA drive. Why run on a slower drive? Were I you, I would put everything on the SATA drive, and use the IDE drive to do backups to protect my more critical data. Or throw it out and get an SATA backup drive.

Newer drives are so much faster than older ones that you will notice the difference in loading programs, booting the OS, and running anything that uses enough memory to utilize your page file.

Should you choose to install both on the IDE drive, you will have to start by creating an empty partition for the Win7 OS. If your drive is already fully allocated to one partition, this is a slightly-skilled process with a moderate risk of catastrophic failure (loss of all data, drive will still be usable). If there is anything on your IDE drive that is of any value to you, either have backups or don't go this route.

 

[anuk07]

I am afraid to install xp on newer drive i.e SATA, as it could not get activated online because the code is activated earlier on different hard disk ....but there will be no probs on installing win7 on newer drive as win7 is new too...

 

[anuk07]

Best answer selected by anuk07.

 

[WyomingKnott]

I am afraid to install xp on newer drive i.e SATA, as it could not get activated online because the code is activated earlier on different hard disk ....but there will be no probs on installing win7 on newer drive as win7 is new too...

From my personal experience: I own a full retail copy of XP that has resided on several different computers. Each move has required me to call Microsoft, and each time I have been given a proper code with no questions other than my product key and contact information. I did buy that copy directly from Microsoft, once they threatened to discontinue XP in favor of Vista.

If you are putting a new drive into the same machine, you may not even have to re-activate. My understanding (which may be wrong) is that several hardware components go into determining what is "the same system." CPU, graphics, mobo, possibly other disks. After all, most of us have changed a system drive, either voluntarily or by need.

Have fun.