2 Hard drives and 2 OS's

[Daveroo]

is it possible to have two hard drives in one computer,with two different operating systems?

i remember the old Leo Laporte tv show,,the screensavers used to talk about having a windows os on one,with linux on the other..and they even talked about having a win os and linux os on one HD,by partitioning one HD into two or more sections..never did understand that.
what im wondering,with this repair im going to do,can i leave my current win Vista 32bit in the computer,and then put a new HD with win 7,64bit on a second HD and call it "D"..or "E"?..i have a "D" drive,,but its on the current HD.

then how do you ensure the new hd would be the "E" drive,where i want to put my FSX/steam?

years ago,on an old pc i dont even have anymore,i had installed a second HD,followed an online guide to format it ect..but it became the "C" drive and the one that was there before was suddenly "D",could a have gone in the BIOS and changed the bootup and made it change?


OR........should i just not worry about it,and just buy two new HDs....my issue is my old (current) HD is SATA II,which runs at 3.0mbs,,and the new HD is SATA 6GB/s
the artical i read this morning listed the sata II at "MBs"..was that supposed to say 3GBs?

[txnetcop]

Yep I have 4 hard drives with 4 different OSs. You simply go to your bios to change the drive you want to boot up in.

[Dangerousdave26]

Its never a problem to "dual boot" but there are certain steps in how you set it up depending on which Windows OS you will be dual booting with. Most of the time Windows has to be installed first before you setup the dual boot.

Just make sure you do your homework/research into how to set it up. There should be plenty of step by step tutorials out there to help you out.

[Chris Sykes]

also for instance, if your wanting to dual boot vista and 7 you need to install vista before 7 otherwise the boot manager wont be able to boot both OS'.

[Daveroo]

also for instance, if your wanting to dual boot vista and 7 you need to install vista before 7 otherwise the boot manager wont be able to boot both OS'.

ok new info too,but im going to just rebuild my current PC,and it has a full install of vista 32 bit...maybe i should have also asked..will the win7-64bit..still be ok with the vista 32bit,new mobo is 64bit aswell.

[srgalahad]

is it possible to have two hard drives in one computer,with two different operating systems?

i remember the old Leo Laporte tv show,,the screensavers used to talk about having a windows os on one,with linux on the other..and they even talked about having a win os and linux os on one HD,by partitioning one HD into two or more sections..never did understand that.
what im wondering,with this repair im going to do,can i leave my current win Vista 32bit in the computer,and then put a new HD with win 7,64bit on a second HD and call it "D"..or "E"?..i have a "D" drive,,but its on the current HD.



Dave,
A physical HD is just like a closet. It's one big empty space. If you're single you can just dump stuff in it (or organize it). Then you get married and you have to 'partition' the closet (She gets the largest "half" of course). Windows comes with disk management routines to do this and allows you to tell it how big each partition is, what it's for, etc. The same applies if you renovate and build a second closet ( She gets most of that one too...). Typically, unless you are comfortable with the sometimes obscure terms it can be a bit confusing and daunting, which is why there are also aftermarket software packages that are designed to do the same thing, often with more ability and a cleaner interface.

In fact, if your computer already has, or the new one will have a "Recovery" section (often listed as "Drive D:") as opposed to just a Recovery disk on CD, etc. then you've already seen a partitioned HD.

This will give you a lot of information on one such product. If nothing else, read through some of the Knowledge Base and descriptions.
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/disk-manager

[manfredc3]

Windows 7 64bit boot manager will work just fine w Vista 32bit.

I have two computers running in a network, of which the FSX pc only run's W7 64bit, and the second pc is multi boot with Windows XP and Windows 7 64bit (each on their own HDD. At boot I select while OS I want to run. IN the BIOS, make sure to select the Windows 7 drive as your first/primary boot disk.

[Daveroo]

IN the BIOS, make sure to select the Windows 7 drive as your first/primary boot disk



why is this?.....even if the main one ill use for my daily work stuffs is still the vista install...then id want win 7 to boot first or on start up?...not arguing..im just asking to learn.

[hairyspin]

Fit the new HD to your rig and install Win7 to that HD. It will detect your Vista installation and make a dual-boot setup without you lifting a finger. To add more options to a dual-boot setup, get EasyBCD (free for non-commercial use) and use that for refinements.I have XP and Win7 on separate hds and that's exactly what I did. No need to muck about with the BIOS.