Windows 7: Windows 7 on OLD computers

ibm T40 ,Windows 7 works well

Hi guys. I'm going to jump on this Windows 7 bandwagon soon and had a question or two about putting it on my old machine. First to the system specs:
Computer started out as a HP pavilion 716n from which I upgraded to 2gb DDR 400mhz ram, 2.6 ghz P4 Northwood processor, ATI radeon x700 AGP video card, and a 500gb seagate 7200.11 sata hard drive.
My dilema is this; I obviously don't want to lose the data I have accumulated over the past few years but I do want to try out the new OS before buying it or Vista. I do not have an install disk for my XP. I also do not have any way to back up the 500gb drive.

What I would like to know is can I install Windows 7 on a secondary hard disk instead of partitioning the 500gb unit?
The reason I suggest this is to keep as much separation between the OS's as possible to avoid contamination and corruption that may occur with a BETA build. I have several ATA drives lying around empty and would like to use one of those.

Would I still get the same option to chose the OS during the boot menu or would I be required to change the boot priority in BIOS every time I wanted to boot Windows 7 instead of XP?

Thanks for any advise....

i think you`d better install Windows 7 on your other hard drives,it is not a good thing if the data damaged.
it will setup a boot menu to choose start Windows 7 or start xp automately after you install Windows 7,

How about this situation.... Something I have not had the experience with....

Provided no other hardware changes...

Can I install Windows 7 on a separate drive, remove my XP drive, test and experience Windows 7 for a while, then later remove the Windows 7 drive and replace the XP drive and retain all functionality without any hiccups in the booting process??

As I mentioned I do not have an XP disc so "repairing" or "reactivating" may be difficult.

Do you have an external USB drive? The easiest way to back out of it is to create an image backup. I use Paragon Drive Backup Personal 9. But now there is a free version of 9 that does all the backup mine does without some bells and whistles like excluding folders etc.. The program comes with a Linux based Boot CD image with USB and Networking support. If your HD gets totally hosed you boot the CD and pull the archive from either a network or a USB drive. The thing really works too. I just put my Vista back on after playing with Windows 7 for a few days.

I think the free version name is Paragon Express or drive backup express. Google will find it. It's good to have a reliable backup tool anyway. No way would I have Windows 7 on both my PCs at the same time otherwise. I'm that confident in the restore.

Thanks for that quick info about a free backup utility. I have been looking for one anyway. Tell me this though: how large is the back up image created by the software? Would I seriously be able to create an image of my entire 500gb drive that would fit on removable media (DVD in this case cause my usb drive is only 2gb)?? Backing up my data is one of my resolutions this year...
I would much rather have the backup of my XP system and then install Windows 7 on my SATA drive to utilize the speed and not have to worry about the safety of my data. If I can get the free backup software working this weekend I will be installing Windows 7 for sure! Thanks again.

I would advise against backing up to DVD unless it was a bare bones installation. On my systems I have gotten into the habit of using less than 25% of the partition. That way defrags are fast and if I should have to restore from an image backup it's usually only around 30 GB. Restores typically take less than an hour. If you have HD to spare you might consider getting an enclosure and making external USB out of them. I haven't done it myself but I hear it can be done for small money.

Also it depends how much free space you have. I couldn't resist messing with this beta some more so I sliced off 100 GB from my Vista partition and I just installed it there. The install is quick when it doesn't have to copy your old files to Windows.old.

Edit: btw I wouldn't recommend installing Windows 7 between Vista and another OS. It hides the Vista partition from the user with both Vista and Windows 7 booting as C:. After testing that all OS would boot I installed more programs. Tried to boot into XP and got black screen hang no error. Anyway, on my Vista machine Windows 7 feels just the same only with the nice taskbar and the networking is a pita so I laid Vista back on. Might roll the P4 back to XP too since it keep hassling me about connecting to my printer when I can see create delete and copy files fine. It's getting annoying.

Edit2: to be fair it looks like I had a flaky USB port. Shifting stuff around trying stuff out with the printer on this machine that machine I plugged another device into a port I never used before. Intermittent hang resulted. Just have to mark that port off limits.

I have Windows 7 running in a dualboot with XP Pro on my P4 2.8GHz machine (2GB ram, GeForce 7300GT). My WEI score is only 1.8 for the processor but the others scores are 3-5.5. So far, so good. My PC is only used for web surfing, Quicken, and some light picture editing so I'm happy with its performance.

a 1.8 for the processor? My P3 gets that. I don't think the WEI is accurate.

Or at least not that accurate at the level of hardware that we're using. (Read: old!)