Dual/Triple/Quad Booting Win7?

[Fun Guy]

Getting very close to assembling my next computer, and am thinking about the OS install. My machine will have a 256GB SSD drive for booting, the OS, and all applications. My data will live on a 6GB HDD.

In addition to being my daily machine, this computer will also be doing detailed research and statistical analyses. I was thinking that it would be good to have a clean install of Win7 for this application, with no other apps installed. Which got me thinking... what about games, etc.?

So, here are my questions:

1. Can I dual/triple/quad boot Win7 without any problems?
2. Are there any downsides to what I am wanting to do?
3. How do I do this multiple OS instance install?

Thanks!!

 

[MustISO]

I use VMware workstation to have multiple installs of Windows. To me that's much easier than dual or triple booting. With 16GB of RAM I can run 4 Windows 7 installs (including the host). I put my VMs on a SSD which helps a ton, having them on a mechanical drive was a nightmare.

If you're set on dual or more booting you'll need additional licenses of Windows (to do it legally) and then install each on a different partition.

 

[DrGreen2007]

vmware player would be better (or workstation as suggested too)

Triple boot? one SSD issue has the potential to blow away all your OS installs

 

[Underclocked]

I would make partitions during the first install on the SSD. Use about 80GB for first partition (the os will create a small reserved partition in that process) and the remainder of the SSD's space for the second partition. Use the first partition install for your serious work. After that one is installed, again boot from the USB or DVD and this time direct a clean install to the 2nd partition.

Your boot menu will likely see only the 2nd partition install at this point (not totally sure on that) but you can easily alter it with EasyBCD so that you have a boot entry for Win7 Work and one for Win7 Games. Choose your default and set the timer countdown (30 seconds can be a long time ).

I would then go into each operating system's disk management and remove the drive letter for the other OS. This would keep you from messing one up from the other.

I see no reason given as to why you want three or more boot entries.

I would next make some good image backups on that big drive where you've plenty of room. Use Acronis or similar.

 

[postmortemIA]

You will need different keys for each install. For your purposes, consider using multiple users and installing apps in folders where only one user has access

 

[adamantine.me]

Multi booting is an additional layer of complication, never worked out for me. Have you thought about just getting a decent sized flash drive and doing a persistent Linux install?