Wondering about a second hard drive and installing Vista on it and also a ..

WarEagleAU · Nov 21, 2008

So I got my HDD up and running (Thanks Mussels, Newtekie1 and the other dude) and its 1tb (or 931gb according to XP 64 bit) of free space waiting to be used. I Thought about installing Vistal Ultimate 64 bit on it and possibly doing a Virtual Machine (havent figured it out yet and how to do it) and installinga beta of Windows 7 to test out.

So my questions are, with my new 1TB WD drive being assigned the Letter B and what not, is it possible to install Vista on it and dual boot?

How would I go about installing a Virtual Machine or Environment to test out Windows 7?

Thanks guys

WarEagleAU · Nov 22, 2008

21 views no ideas huh? :roll:

Me either guess Ill google it.

erocker · Nov 22, 2008

Just pop in your Vista disk and when it asks, install it on your new drive. After installation it will just ask you which O/S you want to load up. You could partition your new disk and install both Vista and Windows 7 on each partition for a tri-boot option.

Solaris17 · Nov 22, 2008

erocker said:
Just pop in your Vista disk and when it asks, install it on your new drive. After installation it will just ask you which O/S you want to load up. You could partition your new disk and install both Vista and Windows 7 on each partition for a tri-boot option.

exactly

and it will assign partitions their own drive letter so its easy to distinguish during install

johnspack · Nov 22, 2008

Install paragon hard disk manager 2008 and create multiple primary partitions. Then go ahead and install as many installs of xp, xp64, vista32/64, server 200832/64 as you want on each partition. I boot from my f1 750gb drive to get a boot menu for xp32 or vista ult64, and boot from my raid array to get a menu of xp64/ xp64. This way vista doesn't contaminate my raid array. I use vmware to boot win98se, win2k pro, winxp32, winxp64, vista64, server200864, and win7 6801. Vmware just uses single files on your hd, so it doesn't matter how you partition ect. Hope that answer some questions?
And once you create those partitions, and boot from an install cd, you can pick an empty one to install to, and it just adds to the boot menu.
Edit again: if you install using same install drive even if it has multiple partitions, install earliest os first, ie xp first, then vista.

Mussels · Nov 22, 2008

my advice: unplug the original HD when installing your new OS. The reason being traditional dual boots have a tendency that if one drive dies, you lose both OS's. Doing them 'seperate' your BIOS controls the boot order, and on modern boards thats pressing F12 (gigabyte) or F8 (asus) to choose which HDD to boot from.

windows 7 doesnt play well with VMware, as you dont get full hardware acceleration so you dont get the new shiny features - it looks like vista without em.

CrAsHnBuRnXp · Nov 22, 2008

I dont think you could ever use the drive letter "B:" for a hard drive. I believe it is assigned for a secondary floppy drive.

Other than that, just pop in the hard drive, load up the vista dvd, format and install. If its a combo between Vista and W7, then partition the drive how you want it and install Vista on one and W7 on the other.

Mussels · Nov 22, 2008

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:
I dont think you could ever use the drive letter "B:" for a hard drive. I believe it is assigned for a secondary floppy drive.

Other than that, just pop in the hard drive, load up the vista dvd, format and install. If its a combo between Vista and W7, then partition the drive how you want it and install Vista on one and W7 on the other.

A: and B: are now available again for HDD's in vista.

CrAsHnBuRnXp · Nov 22, 2008

Mussels said:
A: and B: are now available again for HDD's in vista.

Really now? I did not know that.

Mussels · Nov 22, 2008

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:
Really now? I did not know that.

saw it there formatting a drive yesterday. I guess its because no one uses floppies anymore.

CrAsHnBuRnXp · Nov 22, 2008

Mussels said:
saw it there formatting a drive yesterday. I guess its because no one uses floppies anymore.

Just cause it was there though doesnt necessarily mean you could assign the hard drive that drive letter.

Or maybe Im wrong. :eek:

Solaris17 · Nov 22, 2008

i had B as my drive leter the other day and i use A as a floppy their availible you usually need to specify it as it doesnt default B to anything but you can do it.

Solaris17 · Nov 22, 2008

AsRock · Nov 22, 2008

@ WarEagleAU

With dual boot be careful of rebooting from one to the other OS without shutting down the system as i had bad experience with just restarting and changing OS's. You might not get the issue but thought i'd say anyways.

Mussels · Nov 22, 2008

AsRock said:
@ WarEagleAU

With dual boot be careful of rebooting from one to the other OS without shutting down the system as i had bad experience with just restarting and changing OS's. You might not get the issue but thought i'd say anyways.

iv'e had too many problems to list like that, thats why i suggested disconnecting the original drive(s) and using the BIOS to choose what drive to boot from.

AsRock · Nov 22, 2008

Mussels said:
iv'e had too many problems to list like that, thats why i suggested disconnecting the original drive(s) and using the BIOS to choose what drive to boot from.

Annoying having to go into the bios each time though. And for me not a option unless i run 2 arrays.

Mussels · Nov 22, 2008

AsRock said:
Annoying having to go into the bios each time though. And for me not a option unless i run 2 arrays.

modern boards you dont have to go in. they have hotkeys (F8 and F12 most commonly) that shows a list of bootable drives. no different to having to use the keyboard to choose which OS to boot from the windows bootloader.

AsRock · Nov 22, 2008

Mussels said:
modern boards you dont have to go in. they have hotkeys (F8 and F12 most commonly) that shows a list of bootable drives. no different to having to use the keyboard to choose which OS to boot from the windows bootloader.

Good point, i think MS should just fix it already lol..

WarEagleAU · Nov 22, 2008

Thank you all for the help guys. Ill give it a go. How much space does Windows 7 take up? Im assuming a 50GB partition should work well for it. Im sure I can get rid of the partition later should I need to.

@Crash, I already assigned Mr 1 TB the Drive Letter B: Its available. I had the whole alphabet available minus the ones taken up by my card reader and External Drive.

Sounds like a plan to me guys Thank you all again.

oily_17 · Nov 22, 2008

When you install Vista to which ever drive/partition it will automatically assign C: to it anyway.

And I use this little tool for those having restart problems - just two clicks and reboots to which ever OS I choose.

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=11

Mussels · Nov 22, 2008

whichever windows you use, will allow you to label the partitions with different letters.

simplifying that down, if you have two drives, each OS would see its boot drive as C:, and the other as D:

WarEagleAU · Nov 22, 2008

Cool Deal

WarEagleAU · Nov 22, 2008

Alright, so I got Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 with Recovery Cd. I installed it and formatted the WD Green Caviar 1 TB drive. Now it says its a dynamic drive and it cant work with it for partitioning purposes. Any ideas on how I can change that? Its set as a NTFS drive.

WarEagleAU · Nov 23, 2008

Mussels · Nov 23, 2008

in disk management in windows, right click the drive part (on the left, not the partitions part) and convert it to a normal drive type. its not GPT, its the other one.

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