Want to make Win 7 System Partition DualBoot

Since the two drives each see a second partition you can take advantage of the Windows Easy Transfer tool to first make a backup of files and settings you can store on either secondary partition. From there you swap data cables between drives making the 7 HD into Drive #0 then being plugged into the first sata port and set that as the default hard drive.

The Vista HD would be seen as Drive #1 and second in line where once you performed a clean install of 7 the entry to boot into Vista would added in automatically or you can then use the EasyBCD program. By deleting the first primary on the 7 drive following the backup you then let the 7 drive tools create the 100mb system part at the beginning of the drive and proceed to restore the files and settings with the W.Easy Transfer option once a fcesh install of 7 was on.

Once everything was set you then use any method to create images of the new 7 install with that then being the default OS. When recently restoring an image made in december that brought everything back to that but saw no problems with restoration.

Note that prior to restoing one with any program make sure you first backup any new files added on since. Restoring an image will first wipe the drive clean as part of the process in order to unpack the image. The drawback found with Macrium's Reflect over the MS tool is that if anything changes like a drive letter or which drive you first toss a clean install on you may run into the "invalid system image" error.

The system image restored was actually in a folder that have been renamed where you simply browsed to it and still saw the restoration take place. Reflect can be fussy at times.

You might also consider this command from SIW2 to image only Win7 partition. However the partition will need to have MBR recovered into it after reimaging to HD, and it will hold its current offset (disk position).

I still recommend the BIOS-managed Dual Boot method to solve the issue, and make your OS HD's independent at the same time. It works every time and avoids Windows-managed Dual Boot complications.

With the latest EasyBCD builds you can have it both ways for adding Vista into the 7 bcd store once each drive is made bootable as stand alones. The MS page shows how to use the recovery console when booting live off of the 7 dvd in order to rebuild or actually build a new bcd store for the present 7 installation.

The other options would have been preferred when first planning out the dual boot with 7 being the newer version and still seeing each drive able to operate independently. With 5 satas and testing 7 along with Vista and XP last I had plenty of mbr and other things to plan out then!

So much good advice, where do I start?

Well, greggrocker, your method leads me to what I was trying to do, so that is what I will be trying in a few days (I fell asleep last night in the middle of writing this.) I have used the sniping tool to attach a picture that should help everyone, such as:

• Second hard drive Windows 7 is activated, what 100 mg partition before Windows 7? I don't have one, etc., and, hopefully, help you figure out and tell me why it made the 200 mg partition logical. I will be deleting it.
• J is HP's Recovery, I temporarily changed it to J for some reason and now E has disappeared as an option for it to be named.

I haven't yet copied data from the Win7 data drive to the Vista data drive area. I plan to shrink it to make a partition to store the Windows image of Win 7 only, about how big should that be? It is, by the way, "belt and suspenders."

I have Macrium Reflect Free and have/will have images of Vista and Windows 7 on the data drive, which is copied to a similar drive on my other HDX18 whenever both are open and then to the external drive, which usual lives with the other HDX18. However, the last rescue disk doesn't work on these two HDX18's...and it used to! And of course I'd already thrown out the trash with the old one that worked. Yes, I added the two supplementary doohickeys which did zilch. One line mentioning Linux loads, then cursor sits at second line and nothing happens.

I assume when you talked about reinstalling Windows you mean in a worst case scenarios.

This is a laptop, I can switch the position of the hard drives, but if it will confuse Macrium perhaps it is best not to.

The images here will show you how to upload and attach an image file like the snipping you took of the DM.

Another thing is the system reserved partition is only 100mb in size and is created by the 7 installer itself to see that work out.