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Dual boot / Dual Drive queries
Hi
After struggling with a problem at my office for a while, a helpful member of these forums managed to sort it in a few minutes so I'm back for some advice on my home rig!
My home rig is basically split between work use and recreational use. Currently I have an OS drive with a couple of storage drives - all mechanical SATA drives. I decided that I was going to get myself an SSD and use that with a fresh installation of Windows 7 (Home Premium) as a gaming install. I need to leave my current Vista install intact because it has a number of programs set-up for my work and will continue to handle this side of things.
I was aware of multiboot setups, though I have never done one before, and as such have read a number of threads on the subject, including the great series of guides by Brink found on this site. At the moment I'm thinking of keeping the installs seperate, not technically a dual-boot I suppose, by removing all the other drives whilst I install Windows 7 to the SSD. Choosing the OS will then I believe be a process done within the BIOS by selecting the drive boot order.
I came across this mentioned in one thread:
"Use the one-time BIOS Boot Menu key given on first boot screen to trigger the HD not set to boot first"
I think this means a key for choosing the boot order? I have an Asus X38 motherboard (Asus Maximus Formula) with an AMI bios and I can't seem to find anything at POST or in the documentation that suggests a key to get a boot sequence screen. Is anyone aware what it might be or if it isn't possible with this BIOS?
My main question is regarding the appearance of the other drives within each installation. For example, currently on my Vista install C is the OS drive, D is the optical, and E/F are storage drives. Whilst booted into Windows 7 on the SSD how will my Vista drive appear, and the other drives - will they maintain their drive letters C-F?
This brings me onto my other question. Since C is sort of the strandard designation for an OS drive will I need to pick a different drive letter for the Windows 7 install on the SSD, e.g. B or Z, so that it does not conflict with the drive running Vista which is currently assigned C?
I guess basically I'm trying to understand how the various drives in the machine will be recognised and appear in each of the Windows OSes and how they handle drive letter associations between the two.
Any clarification on these questions would be greatly appreciated.