Dual Boot question..

[Larkon]

Hi everyone,
I have just purchased windows vista and a new harddrive. my question is I am currently running windows xp pro on my existing harddrive which I definity don't want to format. my intention is to load windows vista on the new harddrive and keep my old harddrive intact due to having very important information on it for my business. so is it possible to dual boot using 2 separate harddrives with these 2 seperate OS's? is there software sold that will make this painless, or is this a difficult thing to achieve?
Also is it possible to just load vista on the new harddrive and run it as drive C: and use my old harddrive as drive D: would I not be able see my files on the old drive? I apologise if I am unclear, please help I'm very :confused:


All the best
Larkon= :confused:

[Larkon]

(((((bump)))))))

[renegade600]

you will have to purchase the full version of vista, you will not be able to use the upgrade version. If you upgrade you will be require to install over xp.

If you move the xp drive to d, you may have to reinstall xp.

[ClickCardo]

Dan

I do not think that is true that you need the full version. At least if it is on the same drive different partition. Can you give a link or reference for your statement? As far as a Dual boot if it is like the Beta's whichever you boot into shows up as C and the other as another drive letter.

[Murf]

If you upgrade XP to VISTA, you will loose XP. Vista will invalidate the XP CD Key and you will not be able to reinstall XP. If you have the full version of VISTA you can dual boot. You always install the older operating system first, since you already have XP, installing VISTA on either another partition or hard drive will work. Once installed VISTA will automatically set up the dual boot for you. When you boot up you will have a choice of which operating system (O/S) to boot too. You select and it boots to the O/S.

When VISTA installs, lets say you put it on the 2nd hard drive, it should assign the drive letter D: to it, and rearrange the other drives, i.e., cdrom, dvd ect.

If you want to move the hard drive that you now have XP on and make it the D: drive and put the new hard drive in and install VISTA, whereas, VISTA will now be C:, you can, however, you will not be able to boot into XP. All your files and data will still be there. That is assumming that you jumper the drive (with XP on it) to SLAVE.

How do you plan on installing the 2nd hard drive? Master on it's own cable with a cdrom-burner as the slave????

[Donuil]

Is it possible to install XP on a drive then installed Vista on a seperate parition(using the upgrade) and dual boot?

[Larkon]

Thanks so much for the help everyone! As for the question about how I plan to install second drive, I was planning on installing vista on the new drive on sata 1 set to master and using sata 2 set as slave for the old drive with windows xp. Will this work?:hmm:
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Oh and yes windows vista is full version.

Thanks a bunch

Larkon

[Snurfen]

If you want to move the hard drive that you now have XP on and make it the D: drive and put the new hard drive in and install VISTA, whereas, VISTA will now be C:, you can, however, you will not be able to boot into XP. All your files and data will still be there. That is assumming that you jumper the drive (with XP on it) to SLAVE.

Murf's comments from the quoted paragraph still hold true for two sata drives.
If you want the option of booting from either, you could go into bios and change your boot order from SATA1 to SATA2 as and when you need to.

If you no longer wish to boot to XP, it's ok for it to sit benignly on the SATA2 disc. If you have a space issue, you could copy the data off the XP disc onto the vista disc then reformat the XP disc to free up a lot of space.

Think we may have got a little away from your original needs with all the too-ing and fro-ing, so maybe after everyones input here could you restate your wants bearing in mind the advise so far? :thumbsup:


Would strongly suggest you make backups of the business data to CD, DVD or external HDD before you start any jiggery-pokery, sounds like that data is pretty important to you.