Can Win 10 make a Dual Boot with Win 7 when both Operating Systems are on their own physical disks?

[Caveman]

I currently have functioning copies of Win 7 and Win 10 on 2 separate SSDs. I'm booting into 10 and don't want to have to use the bios to switch to Win 7 each time I wan to. Does Win 10 have the ability to configure a boot menu for both physical disks/installs of 7 and 10?

If not, perhaps EasyBCD can? I'd rather not have to use a 3rd party software to create the dual boot if possible.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Oh, so you DO have SSDs. When you wrote "1TB disk", without mentioning SSD, I thought that you were referring to HDDs.

I think that EasyBCD should be able to do that.

 

[Caveman]

Thanks for the help, I ended up using EasyBCD. Did not mean to obfuscate with multiple semi-related threads... Each was for a different angle on the problem...

 

[spdfreak]

So, I'm going to install Win10 on my new 2nd SSD- Win7 is on my first SSD. I made the ISO thumb drive with the creation tool and when I run setup, it seems like it wants to install on the win7 drive because it's asking me what to keep, etc. How do I install win10 so it installs on the new SSD and dual boots? I don't get a option to pick the new drive but it's definitely there in both bios and disk management.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So, I'm going to install Win10 on my new 2nd SSD- Win7 is on my first SSD. I made the ISO thumb drive with the creation tool and when I run setup, it seems like it wants to install on the win7 drive because it's asking me what to keep, etc. How do I install win10 so it installs on the new SSD and dual boots? I don't get a option to pick the new drive but it's definitely there in both bios and disk management.

You made a USB stick with MS MCT, and now you've plugged it in, while still running Win7? That's only for in-place upgrades. You need to shut down Win7, reboot into BIOS, make the new fresh SSD the default boot drive, and then boot off of the MCT USB stick, use the boot menu hotkey in your BIOS, choose the UEFI-prefixed name if you want to install using UEFI mode, and then when you get to the "Disks" screen, choose the blank SSD to install onto. It may still stick bootloader files onto your Win7 disk, btw, even doing all of that.

If you don't want that, best to disconnect the SATA data cable for the Win7 drive entirely, while the system is shut down, and then boot up with ONLY the fresh SSD and the MCT USB stick plugged in.

 

[spdfreak]

You made a USB stick with MS MCT, and now you've plugged it in, while still running Win7? That's only for in-place upgrades. You need to shut down Win7, reboot into BIOS, make the new fresh SSD the default boot drive, and then boot off of the MCT USB stick, use the boot menu hotkey in your BIOS, choose the UEFI-prefixed name if you want to install using UEFI mode, and then when you get to the "Disks" screen, choose the blank SSD to install onto. It may still stick bootloader files onto your Win7 disk, btw, even doing all of that.

If you don't want that, best to disconnect the SATA data cable for the Win7 drive entirely, while the system is shut down, and then boot up with ONLY the fresh SSD and the MCT USB stick plugged in.

If I disconnect the win7 drive and install on the new drive, will it dual boot on startup or will I need to use the bios boot menu? I don't want to use the bios boot menu if I can do the windows dual boot... I also don't want to screw up my win7 install because I still rely on it for a couple things like media center. UEFI mode is pretty standard, right?

 

[spdfreak]

I did the install as @VirtualLarry suggested with the win7 SSD still plugged in and it worked fine but I do have to F12 and select the win7 drive if that is what I want to boot into. Apparently it didn't put any bootloader files on it. No problem since it takes an extra 5 sec and only matters if I'm booting win7.

 

[VirtualLarry]

In that case, use "BCDEDIT" (a 3rd-party program, may be trial/pay-ware), to add an entry into the Win10's bootloader (BCD) for the Win7 installation, and then leave the BIOS/UEFI set to default boot the Win10 bootloader. (Which will then give you a menu option, to load Win7, once you do the BCDEDIT.)

 

[spdfreak]

Is it possible to copy my user folder from win7 to win10 to avoid copying all that stuff one folder at a time? I know some shortcuts won't work, but it would save a lot of time...

 

[mrblotto]

I have Win10, 7, and Linux installed on 3 separate HD's in one system. I just power on the system, mash F11, and choose what OS I want. Works for me, and no boot software to potentially hose things up