installing 2 HD's with 2 seperate OS's

[dgalexan]

I have two hard drives which the same make and model:

 

Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM

 

I am currently running windows vista 64 bit edition on the Hard Drive i have installed. I would now like to install another Hard Drive and run windows xp on the other. I understand you can dual boot on one hard drive but i would like to run them on 2 seperate drives.

 

Is this the best method? Would i have to set the jumpers on the dirves?

 

If i installed 2 HD's with 2 seperate OS's could i pass information between the 2 dives?

[Plastic Nev]

Hi Dgalexan, As far as I am aware, each time you want to change from one OS to the other when doing it that way, you would have to go into the BIOS settings and change the boot order for the drives.

You may be better off having a partition on drive one for the XP and using the second drive as a normal extra drive. After all you will have loads of space with those two installed.

[dgalexan]

ok thanks....will i need to reformat the whole drive? i.e. will i have to reinstall the vista if i want to add xp to the drive aswell.

[stain]

I have two hard drives which the same make and model:

 

Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM

 

I am currently running windows vista 64 bit edition on the Hard Drive i have installed. I would now like to install another Hard Drive and run windows xp on the other. I understand you can dual boot on one hard drive but i would like to run them on 2 seperate drives.

 

Is this the best method? Would i have to set the jumpers on the dirves?

 

If i installed 2 HD's with 2 seperate OS's could i pass information between the 2 dives?

 

i would try to do it this way 1st. i've done it with win2000 and xp before. just make sure youn install your xp on the slave drive. windows should give u a start menu for which op system u want to boot to.

if you want to do it the other way without erasing your vista you will need a tool that will resize patitions without losing data. norton ghost and acronis disk director r a couple of them. be forwarned it does'nt always work out. i had a couple incidents where it errored and i lost the op system anyway.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

You cannot dual boot 2 operating systems installed on 2 physically separate drives unless you run a boot manager facility, end of story.

 

It would be better to install on one single drive only.

 

I'm not including Linux in this scenario.

 

On boot up the bios will look for a Primary boot partition and if two operating systems are on that partition it will then give you a choice.

 

I suggest you install XP first but have a read of this and decide for yourself.

 

Make your computer dual-boot Vista and XP