Windows XP and 7 dual boot on 2 hard drives

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courtney01

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I have XP installed on my SATA hard drive, and I just added my old IDE hard drive to the system for extra storage. I'm now thinking about trying out windows 7, and I want to dual boot XP from the SATA hard drive and windows 7 from the IDE hard drive. I found this general instruction online for dual booting from one hard drive.

http://www.downloadtube.com/blog/20...tallation-directly-from-xp-without-a-livedvd/

On the step where you choose which partition to install windows 7 in, will my IDE hard drive show up there?

If the installation goes well, then whenever I boot up my computer I should have the opportunity to choose which OS to run?

Is there a risk that I'll be losing any data from my XP hard drive, or that whenever I'm using whichever OS, it might interfere with the other OS?
 
There is a risk that you will not be able to boot either OS if the boot sector gets messed up using that method.

This is a more foolproof method:
Install Win 7 with only that one drive in the system.
This will then give it separate boot files to XP.
Plug in the XP drive again.
To change OS, select which drive you want to boot from in the CMOS setup.
 
Nenu said:
There is a risk that you will not be able to boot either OS if the boot sector gets messed up using that method.

This is a more foolproof method:
Install Win 7 with only that one drive in the system.
This will then give it separate boot files to XP.
Plug in the XP drive again.
To change OS, select which drive you want to boot from in the CMOS setup.
Click to expand...

Agreed, this is what I have done.
 
Ok, so if I'm understanding this correctly, it looks like this method keeps the 2 OS's completely isolated?

Is there a faster way to choose which OS to boot instead of always needing to go into the bios to pick the boot order?

I don't have any blank dvds at the moment, so is there a way to burn the iso onto multiple cds?
 
Yes, it makes the OS's independent.

Just after the POST, you may get an option to select which drive to boot from.
It will require you to press F5 or some other key.

The DVD must be burnt to one disk unless you want to make your own installer.
 
On my Gigabyte board G33-Ds2R, I press F12 to select the boot drive.
 
Enter the BIOS once and set it up to boot to the OS that you use most of the time.
Then, you do not have to do anything to boot to that OS. Only if you want to boot the other OS, press F12 at boot and choose the other drive.

You cannot split the install onto multiple CDs.
Get a DVD-RW. Then, you can use the same DVD multiple times.

If you have a 4GB, or larger, USB flash drive, you can use it too for the install and you will not need a DVD then..
 
MrF said:
Enter the BIOS once and set it up to boot to the OS that you use most of the time.
Then, you do not have to do anything to boot to that OS. Only if you want to boot the other OS, press F12 at boot and choose the other drive.
Click to expand...

When I press F12, the only hard drive option I see in the list of boot options is "Hard Disk". I don't see any option that allows me to choose which hard drive I want to boot from.

If you have a 4GB, or larger, USB flash drive, you can use it too for the install and you will not need a DVD then.
Click to expand...
Does the ISO have to be the only file on the usb drive? And when I press F12, I see a couple USB options: USB FDD, USB ZIP, USB CDROM, and USB HDD. Which one do I pick?
 
TheGamerZ said:
Why dual boot xp and 7 when you can run xp within 7?
Click to expand...

Some things won't run in a VM.

I currently dual boot XP and W7 RC on a RAID 0 array that is split in 2 partitions.

I installed XP first, because W7 bootloader should successfully override the XP bootloader, where XP's bootloader might not work to load W7.
 
courtney01 said:
When I press F12, the only hard drive option I see in the list of boot options is "Hard Disk". I don't see any option that allows me to choose which hard drive I want to boot from.

Does the ISO have to be the only file on the usb drive? And when I press F12, I see a couple USB options: USB FDD, USB ZIP, USB CDROM, and USB HDD. Which one do I pick?
Click to expand...


When pressing F12, (assuming a Gigabyte board), you get a plus sign in front of Hard Disk, then hit enter, and it will list the hard drives you can boot from. This assumes both are bootable, one with WinXP and the other Win7.
 
Just install Windows 7 on the 2nd hard drive, it will override the XP bootloader, there is no need to push F12 every time you boot.
 
courtney01 said:
When I press F12, the only hard drive option I see in the list of boot options is "Hard Disk".
Click to expand...
Select Hard Drive and it should descend in and show you the options.

Does the ISO have to be the only file on the usb drive? And when I press F12, I see a couple USB options: USB FDD, USB ZIP, USB CDROM, and USB HDD. Which one do I pick?
Click to expand...
You install a virtual drive program first. I use Virtual Clone Drive. http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
Then, you mount the iso file into your virtual drive.
Now, you can see the content of the iso as if you had already burned it into a DVD and put it in your drive.

Now, you need to make your USB flash drive bootable.
I use the instructions here. http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry
There is also a sticky on these forums. But, I have not tried that.

The USB HDD option should do the trick. But, you may need to try different ones on your motherboard in case it does not.
 
MrF said:
Select Hard Drive and it should descend in and show you the options.


You install a virtual drive program first. I use Virtual Clone Drive. http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
Then, you mount the iso file into your virtual drive.
Now, you can see the content of the iso as if you had already burned it into a DVD and put it in your drive.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with any of this so I hope it's ok if I as what all of this is. What is a virtual drive and why do I need it?

What's mounting and how do I do that?

The USB HDD option should do the trick. But, you may need to try different ones on your motherboard in case it does not.
Click to expand...
If I pick the wrong one at first, that's not going to ruin my computer is it? I can just restart and pick a different boot option?
 
If you don't want to burn an iso image onto a DVD, you can use a virtual drive instead. Then, it is like you have placed the DVD in a DVD drive even though you have not (Virtual).
You can do that with an iso image of a DVD or CD.

Then, you can copy the content onto a USB key.

Alternatively, you can just get a DVD and burn the iso using an iso burner and forget about the virtual drive and USB key.


If you select a boot device that is not really a boot device (wrong device), the PC will not boot. You just press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and it will reboot. There will be no damage to anything.

Edit:
What is a virtual drive?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_image_emulator
 
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I installed virtual clone drive, and I can now see that there's an extra drive under My Computer. For me it's J:, and it says the type is a "CD drive".

After the iso is mounted, do I drag all the files I see there into the USB flash drive? Or do I need to use the copy method shown here: http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/c...38D!1665.entry

The link says
Simply issue the following command to start copying all the content from the Windows Vista DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive.
  • xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
Click to expand...
If I'm not allowed to drag and drop from the virtual drive to the USB flash drive, do I just modify the above copy command line to j:\*.*/s/e/f i:\? (my usb flash drive is currently the i: drive)

By the way, the link also instructs to check what disk number the USB flash drive is, and I should type in "list disk" to verify. But when I do, I get an error message.

Is there an easier way to make the USB flash drive bootable than using the command prompt method described in the link?
 
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Before you go any further, note that if you just want to try Windows 7 just to see how it looks, a virtual machine is much easier to set up and less trouble.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-virtual-machine.htm
This is a good free virtual machine: http://www.virtualbox.org/


Drag and drop has always worked for me after following the instructions in the link for making the key bootable.
The link suggests formating to Fat32. For my USB (Sandisk Cruzer Titanium), Fat has worked.

So, you connected your USB key to your computer, started diskpart, in the diskpart window, typed "list disk", and it gave you an error?
What error?

There is a sticky, which has not worked for me. Give it a try.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1381323
 
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After windows 7 is on my flash drive, and I boot it up, will it give me the option to choose which of my 2 hard drives I can install it in? I want to make sure it installs in the correct one and not accidentally over ride my main xp os.
 
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Whenever I try to boot from the usb drive, my computer always just boots from my primary hard drive with xp on it. I'm running a gigabyte motherboard, so I press F12 when it POSTs and I have a couple USB options: USB FDD, USB ZIP, USB HDD, USB CDROM. I tried all of them, but the flash drive never boots.

Is it possible to install windows 7 while in an xp environment and ultimately let it install over the xp? I'm wondering because the secondary hard drive I'm trying to install windows 7 on currently already has xp on it (from when I was using it as my OS hard drive long time ago). So I can boot up into xp on this hard drive, and I'm hoping I can run windows 7 setup from there. Is that possible?
 
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courtney01 said:
After windows 7 is on my flash drive, and I boot it up, will it give me the option to choose which of my 2 hard drives I can install it in? I want to make sure it installs in the correct one and not accidentally over ride my main xp os.
Click to expand...

The second post in this thread explained to you how you should install Windows 7 to end up with the most flexibility.
You have to be specific if you have decided not to follow that.

You can enter the BIOS and change the boot priority to give priority to the hard drive you want to install Windows 7 on. This will have the same final result. But, if you make a mistake, you will get different results! So, it is best to disconnect all the other hard drives.
 
Did you also check under HD (not USB_HD)? Some flash drives show up as a regular hard drive.
It is best not install Windows 7 while booted into XP.
Did you give up on the diskpart route? Why?
 
I was going to do this....and just downloaded windows 7 x64 ver7100 from the microsoft site....will let you guys know how it goes!

al
 
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