Dual Boot Windows 7 in both partions

I am a pack rat, my computer room is packed with computer stuff! My computer itself is packed with a lot of programs. I keep installing free and other goodies and of course it gets slower & slower.

My question is this: Can I dual boot a Win 7 partion with all my junk and the programs I use all the time on one partion, then a second partion with just the bare minimuns to surf at blazing speeds? And use one license of Win 7 on both?

FyI I am geting a new WESTERN DIGITAL WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB cache SATA 6.0Gb/s That I was hoping to be faster than my Seagate

You can try it. It may be viewed as the same installation since it is on the same hardware. Some have reported that they have activated both 32 and 64 bit on the same machine. This might be because MS activation sees them both as the same machine.

As stated, it violates the EULA. But so does continuiing to use XP/Vista in a dual boot when it is used as the qualifying OS for Win7 upgrade version, yet millions are doing it and MS looks the other way.

Thanks for your answers. Sounds good to me! To create a Win 7 dual boot, should I just follow the directions for Win 7 & Vista dual boot?

Thanks

seemorebutz said:

Thanks for your answers. Sounds good to me! To create a Win 7 dual boot, should I just follow the directions for Win 7 & Vista dual boot?

Thanks

Yes

Ok, thats what i thought. Hopefully one last question. Is it OK to install the dual boot on the same hard drive. I have been reading up and some say you should never install both OS's on same hard drive.
I would like to use my new WESTERN DIGITAL WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB cache SATA 6.0Gb/s as my boot drive for both Win7 installs. And the Seagate for storage & backup. What do you guys suggest?

Thanks

You have more independence for each if you put them on separate drives, since you can boot via the BIOS shortcut key for Boot Menu and set favorite HD as first to boot.

With a Windows-managed dual boot, it doesn't matter much whether it is on the same or separate HD's siince they become interlinked anyway.

Performance-wise, I dont' see much difference.

HEllo everyone,

this is related to the original post:

I got a new computer and my friend helped me install so many programs on it that it took 12 hours. Because this was so time consuming, he vowed never to do that again, so, I decided to clone that entire hard drive (hard drive A) to another hard drive (hard drive B). Because hard drive B is 1 TB, I decided to use it as my everyday hard drive and leave hard drive A, only 320 GB, sitting as a back up incase I need that original system that my friend installed if ever something happened to hard drive B.

So I cloned it fine using Western Digital's Acronis and then I managed to switch the boot drive from A to B and I used Easy BCD to do this and I recall switching back to A only to test whether I can switch back and forth, and, comforting me that neither Hard Drive has been corrupted by the clone.

So now I have been noticing some problems with Hard Drive B's OS/boot partition and so I wanted to, as planned, replace Hard Drive B's OS partition with Hard Drive A.

Note: I do not mind having to erase Hard Drive B entirely to clone Hard Drive A to it.

THE PROBLEM: is that when I tried to boot from Hard Drive A it did not work. It asked me to put in my windows 7 DVD but that did not repair it. I tried detaching Hard Drive B and leaving only A and it said that "if I had plugged in new hardware to remove it and restart my computer" so by itself, Hard Drive A, is thought of as a new Hardware.

I also got an error saying my File:\Boot\BCD status is 0xc000000f

Thank-you for reading this and please help me boot from Hard Drive A again.

Make sure Hard Drive A is marked active, unplug other HD, boot Win7 DVD, click through to Recovery tools list to Run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to repair or rewrite the MBR.

If you can boot Drive B with A plugged in, please post back a screenshot of your full Disk Mgmt drive map, using Snipping tool in Start Menu, attach file using Paper Clip in Reply Box.

Hey Gregrocker,

Thanks for your help, man. So here is what I did:

1) First, I activated Hard Drive A, then turned off the computer, unhooked Hard Drive B and did a repair (with Windows 7 DVD) followed by a reboot.
2) I repaired again but it says that Windows can not fix this automatically, and to remove any newly attached hardware. Nevertheless I did another reboot.
3) And the same message as in Step 2) appeared. But I rebooted again to find the exact same message.

Note: In all three steps there was a repair box which searched for windows installations and I picked the Windows 7 Professional edition showed. When it goes to the next box and it says attempting repairs, one time (after the first reboot) it said checking drive for errors..but then it would continue to go to "the computer cannot repair automatically".

4) Surprisingly, with A and B installed, it started.

Additionally, I bought another 2TB Hard Drive (Hard Drive C), plugged it in, and all three started with Hard Drive B's OS. Hard Drive C will be used as storage of all files of Hard Drive B in case Hard Drive B needs to be completely deleted to clone Hard Drive A's OS partition.

I have attached a picture and note that the drive partition labeled "Hard Drive C: Original System" is where I desire to put another back up of Hard Drive A.

Thanks again for your time.