2 O/S 2 HDD's

[Bobcoop103]

I have win 7 installed on a SATA drive & XP on an IDE drive, both run ok when connected separately, my question is: can I leave them both connected and choose which one to boot from?

Thanks in advance, Bob

 

[Saltgrass]

Yes, and there are some tutorials to show you how.

But I would assume you would want Win 7 as the primary OS. So boot to that, then use EasyBCD 2.0 beta to set up the dual boot. It can be downloaded if you join their forum for free, just register.

You can also set it up yourself, but basically you will need to move 3 files into the Win 7 system partition. Ntldr, ntdetect, and boot.ini. Then modify boot.ini to show the second drive (rdisk(1)), and then use bcdedit to add the entry in the Boot Menu.

Check the tutorial and post back if you have problems. Any questions, post back if you are not sure.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2676-bcdedit-how-use.html?filter[3]=Installation and Setup

And there are some tutorials from Iseeuu, but I do not have that list.

 

[gregrocker]

It's a cleaner dual boot to boot via BIOS boot order and shortcut key. This leaves the drives independent so they can come and go as you please.

A Windows-managed Dual Boot interlinks the drives and makes them harder to extricate.

Connect both drives, set favorite OS as first HD to boot in BIOS setup (after DVD drive), then use the key given for Boot Menu (usually F12 or F10) to trigger the other HD instead.