Installing Win 7 on 2nd hard drive

[ViperGuy]

I have XP MCE now and just bought a new sata hard drive and want to isntall Win 7 Pro on it. I read the tutorial but am still confused. Can I just remove my current hard drive with XP on it, install the new hard drive and then install win 7 on it? Then when Win 7 is installed reinstall my old XP drive?

I built my PC its a
Core 2 Duo
4 gigs of ram,
400 GB sata drive with XP
200 GB IDE drive for storage
IDE DVD rom drive
sata DVD burner
new blank 1TB sata drive

 

[gregrocker]

Yes, this is actually the best way to dual boot since it leaves your HD's independent. You then boot via the BIOS boot order and/or using the key given for Boot Menu on first bootup screen.

If you leave the XP drive plugged, Win 7 will configure a Windows managed dual boot which is harder to extricate XP later since it will hold the MBR for both.

 

[Night Hawk]

Welcome to SF! Viper Guy

There's also another option not mentioned of simply switching sata ports for both drives leaving the new drive as HD0. Once 7 is installed on the new drive XP will be seen as "previous version of Windows" on the boot options screen once added into the 7 boot loader automatically. Both drives still remain independently bootable on their own and the XP entry is easy to remove from the 7 BCD store later if needed.

The guide here shows two methods of installing 7 before or after XP is on. Method One suits your needs there. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

 

[ViperGuy]

Thanks for the fast replies.

So I can just plug the new hd in the sata port of the old hd and the old hd in the next open sata port put in the Win 7 disc and install it?

I built my own system but im still not familiar with some of the more technical stuff.

 

[gregrocker]

You need to use separate cables: Hard Drive Update - Solutions by PC Magazine

 

[whs]

I would go with what gregrocker says - make an independent installation. No need to uninstall your current disk, just unplug the power cable. Then install Win7 on your new disk, replug the XP disk and choose your boot sequence via the BIOS. That way you don't have to mess around with MBR's - yukky stuff.

 

[ViperGuy]

I would go with what gregrocker says - make an independent installation. No need to uninstall your current disk, just unplug the power cable. Then install Win7 on your new disk, replug the XP disk and choose your boot sequence via the BIOS. That way you don't have to mess around with MBR's - yukky stuff.

So when I plug the XP drive back in will Win 7 see it?

Thanks again

 

[Night Hawk]

Switching the data cables are easy enough since the Windows installer always looks for the first drive on the system to place the boot files and create mbr entries there. Once those are swapped you will still need to take a trip into the bios boot section to make sure the new drive is set as the first in order or the default boot device depending on which bios version is used.

Once 7 is on you can set which version will be the default OS as well. Being 7 is newer you may want to leave 7 set as the default until getting familiar with it however. The XP entry seen on the startup screen can also be renamed with the help of a small 3rd party tool as well as setting the amount of time the boot options will be displayed onscreen before proceeding into the default OS.

Until the next version 2.0 of the EasyBCD tool is available in order to preserve the new look on the 7 boot splash screen a small run from folder tool called BellaVista will work for renaming "previous version" to "XP Home or Pro" with the set description option. System Tools - BellaVista

For setting which OS is default if you elect to have XP set as default you can use this as well or proceed into the boot tab in the msconfig utility there. The Startup & Recovery section found in Control Panel>System>Advanced settings.

 

[whs]

I would go with what gregrocker says - make an independent installation. No need to uninstall your current disk, just unplug the power cable. Then install Win7 on your new disk, replug the XP disk and choose your boot sequence via the BIOS. That way you don't have to mess around with MBR's - yukky stuff.

So when I plug the XP drive back in will Win 7 see it?

Thanks again

Yes - even better. If you create a seperate partition for your data from the XP system, you can include those folders (documents, pictures, music, etc) into the Win7 libraries and you don't have to worry about syncing your data.

 

[ViperGuy]

Thanks for all the detailed help will try this all tomorrow.

One last question should I partition the new 1TB drive or just leave it whole? My current 400 GB XP drive isn't partitioned.

Thanks again.

 

[whs]

I would partition it. If you leave it as one partition, you may later have trouble to shrink it the way you like. It is always easier to delete a partition and add it to the one that's to the left of it. Depending on your needs, I would make 3 or 4 partitions. If you don't know yet what you are going to put in, make it 4 times 250GBs.
And as I suggested earlier, think about an independent data partition to where you can move all your current XP data. That can be on either disk - on the XP disk though only if you can shrink the 400GB enough to have sufficient space for now and later.

 

[Night Hawk]

That will depend mainly on how you plan things out. Once you have run 7 for some time you will likely want to dump XP entirely at some point and may wish the 1tb was simply added on for storage depending on how much data and files you store locally on drives. Here the new drive for the 64bit 7 is a 1tb model with a single larger primary since I already have a good amount of storage space on separate drives.

You could even decide to shrink the XP primary down and see a new second primary for 7 there as well. With several drives in here the choice was simply using each drive for a single large primary either for OS or storage. That saves from running into the "out of memory" error you see when filling up a small primary when spliting a drive up.

 

[ViperGuy]

Installed 7 today, it was easy but I had one hiccup. I disconnected my XP drive and installed my new hard drive then went to install Win 7 and my mobo throws a code! Nothing showed up on my screen and I couldn't get into the BIOS, luckily I have another PC and looked up the code online. It was my ram so I uninstalled 2 sticks and restarted then everything went smoothly.

Only took 20 minutes to install and download all the updates.
It looks pretty and is fast but it uses more ram then XP.

Hopefully this is my last question. I cant dual boot, I can see the XP hard drive and all the files on it what do I do next?

 

[gregrocker]

If you kept XP unplugged during Win7 installation it should be now bootable via the BIOS shortcut key given on your first bootup screen for Boot Menu.

This is a better way to Dual Boot if you can configure it because the drives remain independent and can come and go as you please. Win7 boots as default OS, or you can choose XP using the Boot Menu key.

If not, use EasyBCD 2.0 to configure a Windows Dual Boot which makes the drives interdependent and harder to extricate. Add XP on the Add/Remove tab by Type and Name, accepting prompt to add boot files, it will fill in drive letter, click Add OS. Then highlight new XP listing above, and Save.

 

[Night Hawk]

You can have independently bootable drives as well as having one set as default with options to boot into the installations on the other drives with the EasyBCD program. The present second sata was originally a stand alone drive until the startup repair tool made that a recovered installation when the new drive's mbr had an oops! That wasn't the preferred way to add that in for sure!

The F8 option here is used mainly for booting off a live disk or 7 dvd when performing an install rather then going back and forth into the bios to reset the hard drive as first all over. That option also is used for live cds or booting from a flash drive. For ease of a dual boot while still keeping each drive as a stand alone you simply add the new entry into the default drive's boot loader there.