Dual Boot question W7 and Vista

[Jeffnwm]

I went out and got a new hard drive and installed 7 on it.. up and running good. When I isntalled the drive, I disconnected my sas raid array drives which have my Vista OS on it. I want to bring those back online but don't want conflicts or trouble.

I want to keep the vista install for now till I can get everything I want over to 7, so I need to be able to dual boot. At this point, what / how do I do that?

The two OS's are on seperat drives and the vista is on an SAS raid array( which I will have to install drivers for in W7) ... do I just reconnect the drives and let the system boot up? what's going to determine which drives are currently C: and or system drives?

 

[Jeffnwm]

dual boot question

Well no one's answering in the installation section so....

I installed 7 on a new hard drive today, disconnecting my SAS raid drives which have Vista on them. I want to bring them back online and be able to dual boot to 7 or Vista. Can I just reconnect the hard drives? do I need to do something else? Both drives are considered C:...what do I do now?

 

[logicearth]

No you won't be able to unless the BIOS can manage the switching of which drive is used to boot up to.

 

[Jeffnwm]

so how do I set this up so I can dual boot?

 

[gregrocker]

Dual booting is unnecessarily complicated in this situation, and hard to later extricate from even without the RAID issue.

Better to plug in Vista and use it as a data drive to copy your files over to Win7. It may even boot up using the BIOS boot order shortcut key (usually f10) to set it first to boot on a per-boot basis.

If you really want to dual boot then you will need to lose the RAID array, plug in the Vistsa drive with the correct BIOS settings, then try running a Win7 repair install (Upgrade from desktop) to configure the dual boot correctly. But the RAID array still makes this a long shot.

 

[Jeffnwm]

now the Vista is on the Raid array... they are 2 SAS drives which are disconnected. I installed the new windows 7 on a new drive that's non raid, just sata. So if I plug in the two disconnected sas drives the raid controller will pick them up in the bios and Vista will be available then.

so does that change anything?

 

[gregrocker]

I am not familar with RAID, except to get it off since redundant arrays are redundant with HDD imaging.

Plug it in and see. Hopefully it will at least serve as a data drive so you can transfer your Vista files over via explorer to Win7. And it may boot when set to boot first in BIOS.

 

[Jeffnwm]

Ok I plugged in the sas raid array drives. System booted normal to Vista. Up and running and shows the drive I have Windows 7 on as drive :I

so at this point what shopuld I do? a repair/reinstall of Windows 7 to the same drive letter that Vista see's it on and from within Vista?? What would that do to installed apps in windows 7?

 

[gregrocker]

Not sure what you want to accomplish at this point.

Drive letters are relative and cannot be controlled with WIN7 anyway, so don't bother.

Repair installs of Win7 are done from it's desktop and willl save programs, files and settings while reinstalling the OS underneath it, also reconfiguring the boot. But the RAID array is a wild card in the mix.

Better to restart and see if you can use F10 to boot into Win7, since you say it boots to Vista now with the RAID plugged in. If there is no BIOS boot order shortcut key, then boot into BIOS (F1,2 or Delete) and set Win7 drive to boot first and see if that works.

Actually, having it boot into the OS of choice using BIOS shortcut key would be your best bet since you will want out of VISTA soon enough anyway, and with RAID you are lucky to get that. Dual boots are always hard to get out of even without the RAID complication.

 

[Jeffnwm]

k...well I tried to reboot from Vista to start an install Windows 7( trying to see what would happen if I did a reinstall or repair of Windows 7) . The install process started since CDrom was set to 1st boot...when I got to the drive options for the Windows 7 install I didn't see the SAS drives or the raid array....so Windows 7 install doesn't recognize the raid controllers at this point. Makes sense since when I was booted up in 7, the raid controllers were showing in the Control Panel as no drivers installed...something funky about Asus sas controller drivers cause I couldn't get them installed earlier when I tried to update them.
So my options then were to repair or install Windows 7 new again which I opted not to do at this point because I went through several hours of installing apps in Windows 7 earlier today and don't want to have to do that again.

Guess I need to install sas controller drivers at Windows 7 install so it can see the drives that Vista is on. Is it the same as Vista install at boot? F6 to get scsi drivers install screens?

 

[gregrocker]

Did you try to boot into Windows 7 by selecting it to boot first in BIOS?

When you plugged Vista back in, it booted up so there should be at least two HDD's there for you to choose from.

Try the F10 or other BIOS boot order shortcut key, or just boot into BIOS F1,2 or delete, then select the Win7 drive to boot to see if it will.

You need to boot into Windows 7 in order to run a repair install But the only reason to do this is to have it reconfigure the boot correctly, and there is no way to know it will do this with RAID. So better to settle for booting into either OS by using BIOS boot order method.

If you cannot boot into Win7, then your next step is to boot into the Win7 installer and run Startup Repair at least 3 times to recover your ability to boot Win7. Again, expect RAID complications. But at any point you can again pull the Vista drive and repair Win7 startup to get into it.

 

[Jeffnwm]

ok So have a work around...if I set the sata drive that windows 7 is on as the 1st disk drive in bios, it boots up to 7. If I select the SaS Raid array as 1st drive in bios, I get Vista. And now in Windows 7 for some reason I can see the sas raid array drive with the vista file stuff on it even tho the Control panel still has the raid controller hosed.... So if I need to copy files I can. Not the best selective option but works for now.

 

[gregrocker]

ok So have a work around...if I set the sata drive that windows 7 is on as the 1st disk drive in bios, it boots up to 7. If I select the SaS Raid array as 1st drive in bios, I get Vista. And now in Windows 7 for some reason I can see the sas raid array drive with the vista file stuff on it even tho the Control panel still has the raid controller hosed.... So if I need to copy files I can. Not the best selective option but works for now.

This is what I was trying to suggest the past few hours. It IS the best possible option since it is now as easy to back out of XP as just unplugging the drive.

Every day here we help a dozen guys try to get out of dual boots, each one a puzzle that gets easily botched. You have the best possible situation.

After you get your Win7 running on its own to your satisfaction, be sure to make a backup image (Win7 backup is fine) saved externally so you never need to reinstall again, just reimage the HDD (or a replacement) using your Win7 Installer Repair console>Recover using an image.

 

[Jeffnwm]

FYI, in my Asus bios boot options, the option for booting from the Raid Array drives is only possible in the 1st drive option . IOW, I can select hard drive orders 1st - 4th etc. but the Raid array can only be seen in the 1st drive option...can't be set to be booted from in 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc...but other non raid drives can be set in any order. Maybe this will be a better way in the long run like you said earlier for clearing a dual boot option once Vista's gone

 

[gregrocker]

Sooner the better Enjoy Win7!

 

[Jeffnwm]

thx Greg
never made a backup image, just burn to dvd?

 

[Jeffnwm]

is vista nd 7's file stuff pretty much the same? can just save the favorites folder from vista and copy it to IE in 7, etc?

 

[gregrocker]

thx Greg
never made a backup image, just burn to dvd?

best to do to internal or external drive since it takes multiple DVD's.

type backup into start box, study Create an Image> DVD choice to see size.

You can create a primary formatted "recovery" partition on your Win7 AND storage drives to store it (in case of Win7 HDD failure).

It will autodetect a primary partition on any internal or external drive, to save the image to "Drive" choice.

Then later, booting from Win7 installer>Repair console>Recover an Image it will autodetect image to reimage to HDD or a replacement easily.

 

[Jeffnwm]

Ha! I just realized/remembered that a while back I moved my system folders in Vista from the system drive ( C: ) to another larger data drive. The SAS drives are small and the total array was only 140gb or so and I installed most of my vista apps on the other dual 750gb data drives in my system along with moving all the system folders there too (can't remember the process for doing that now...). So I have pretty much everything I'd want to save out of the Vista setup already on the data drives ...

 

[gregrocker]

is vista nd 7's file stuff pretty much the same? can just save the favorites folder from vista and copy it to IE in 7, etc?

Yes, open your vista folder>Select all from first drop down tab then drag group over to same folder in Win7 explorer at left. Repeat.

Downloads is a biggy for me. Put all your installers in there, even disk ISO's so you have a master file of all your dl's and installers.