What is good advice for dual-boot Win7/Win10 disk configurations?

[BonzaiDuck]

When I learned last April that I could keep Win 7 and install Win 10 for a dual-boot configuration, I set up my best system so that both system volumes are on the same SSD with the "system reserved" and "EFI" system volumes.

This, as well as other household workstations, are backed up nightly to a WHS-2011 server. All disks and disk volumes are backed up.

I added a data drive -- a 1TB spinner -- to the system, and created two logical volumes of equal size on it.

Booting to one or the other OS, I removed the drive letters for both volumes (one on the SSD, the other on the spinner) so that the active OS couldn't "see" the inactive partitions.

This seemed to work fine for several months. In fact, I was able to add another 60GB SSD to the mix as a caching drive for the spinner, split between the two OS's. Eventually I eliminated caching for the Win 10 OS's data disk, since I wasn't using Win 10 enough and the caching drive wasn't large enough to provide sufficient performance for either OS.

Then, the October Win Updates for Win 7 made my Kaspersky KIS malfunction and throw weird symptoms. This was a common problem between two twin systems (see sig), the second had a simpler configuration because it has to run Win 7 all the time. Testing hardware and other factors, I probably deleted the Win 10 volumes on the first system as a mistake -- to simplify things. I worried that the caching program may have caused the trouble, but taking it out of the equation proved that the symptoms arose as I described. the Win 10 OS was not a major loss, and I can re-install it.

How would you set up your dual boot configuration? What comments can you offer on mine? One veteran member described his dual-boot as using separate disks for each OS. I still find using an HDD in the mix desirable for the larger capacity when I can replace the 1TB with something >= 2TB.

And if I'm working a lot with either OS, it makes more sense to me that I have no more physical disks running for both than I'd have for one. So if I go two weeks without booting into Windows 10, I wouldn't have been powering two extra storage devices in addition to the pair I'd want for a single OS.

 

[JackMDS]

AFAIC the Best flexible, safe way is to use this free software.

Scroll down to download the Noncommercial free version.

https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I've had enough "oh crap now what?" moments with different bootloaders and so on that I'm not all that keen on dual-boot systems anymore.

So I use a different boot SSD for each OS, and mount the same NTFS data drive in both systems. So it's really only one extra drive. And an idle SSD is using a fraction of a watt, so the extra power use is basically nothing.

Tiered caching is something that is, IMO, more trouble than it's worth. I don't like extra complexity.

Then again I have the disposable income to do that.

 

[Underclocked]

My setup is two smaller SSDs (120GB drives) with each OS residing on one of them. These were installed independently. I have a TB drive (split into two partitions) for storage and have my personal folders shared between the two OSs on that drive's first partition. The Windows 7 drive is my default boot drive and I used EasyBCD to add an entry for the Win10 install. This has worked well for me for months now.

I can choose to switch using the OS boot menu or do a clean boot from either OS drive by changing default boot in bios.

 

[JackMDS]

I have have several Dual Boots With Win 10, 7 and even one with XP.

After numerous amount of trials using different methods I concluded that with Using EZBCD (as I mentioned before), and this specific arrangement post above by Undertclock yields the best results.

My setup is two smaller SSDs (120GB drives) with each OS residing on one of them. These were installed independently. I have a TB drive (split into two partitions) for storage and have my personal folders shared between the two OSs on that drive's first partition. The Windows 7 drive is my default boot drive and I used EasyBCD to add an entry for the Win10 install. This has worked well for me for months now.
.

That said, when using two SSDs it does not matter if EZBCD is with Win 10 or Win 7. If it is on Win 10 it might display the Boot Menu choice a little faster.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've had enough "oh crap now what?" moments with different bootloaders and so on that I'm not all that keen on dual-boot systems anymore.

So I use a different boot SSD for each OS, and mount the same NTFS data drive in both systems. So it's really only one extra drive. And an idle SSD is using a fraction of a watt, so the extra power use is basically nothing.

Tiered caching is something that is, IMO, more trouble than it's worth. I don't like extra complexity.

Then again I have the disposable income to do that.

Well, I've completely fixed my October disaster, and Kaspersky Labs has my trace files so I can only wait for any further instructions. the worst of it is that one system in the house has all the other KIS protections except the firewall, using the Windows Firewall instead. So I'm pondering how to re-install the Win 10 that I lost.

Keeping a separate SSD powered without access from the active OS shouldn't matter for either longevity or power consumption. So I'm going to hold onto that idea.

On the matter of the "data drive." I may have to think in terms of three "categories:" OS + programs; More programs and their files; personal data with documents, spreads and things like Quicken files.

Caching the larger hard disk works great for programs and games. It's worse than a bad idea for DVR captures or movies. It would seem these latter would best be on a disk with the personal data.

This is what can happen with a shared drive (between OS's) if it's cached to SSD. First, you actually have to split the caching SSD into two partitions/volumes to use one drive for it. Or you have to have one caching drive for each HDD volume/partition associated with each OS. Definitely adding complexity with that. But suppose you merely access the HDD from the OS that doesn't cache it to the SSD? You're going to change the data on a drive which is cached under the other OS. This then causes problems, and it's only lucky that the OS in conjunct with teh caching program will run a CHKDSK if something's not Kosher. That's why I'm compelled to break such an HDD into two volumes and each for use exclusively by either OS.

The other possibility is to eliminate the SSD-caching, and only cache to RAM, with lower performance expectations. One could also say -- "why cache the HDDs at all?" Or, why not just eliminate the caching program? Doing so would mean buying more SSDs and less HDDs. At least the media files on HDD doesn't leave anything to be desired there.

I'm going to look into this EZBCD software -- what? -- a hypervisor? I'll come up to speed.

I appreciate the thoughts and ideas, and hope that more responses come in on this while I catch up on some of the recommendations so far. I should probably buy another couple storage devices for this rig, or think about it. And -- refine my "strategy."

At least it's a good thing that storage is cheap enough these days that one doesn't need to think about "what isn't being used" in this sort of situation.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

OK, folks. I might as well pose this question here rather than starting another thread.

I've harvested a 500GB Crucial MX100 SSD from another system, and Secure-Erased it. [Other system will be sold after a little more harvesting. Buyer knows what to expect.]

My Skylake currently has all OS volumes on a 480GB ADATA SSD (win 7 and win 10 plus system-reserved plus EFI-partition). It is a GPT disk partition.

Is there some fault-free way that I can move the Win 10 to the Crucial? Or would it be just as well to reinstall it completely? Under Win 10, there's no other software installation as yet but the drivers.

Who's the guru for something like this? One could think -- simplistically-- that this is somehow possible. If it is, that's good. If it isn't, the re-install shouldn't be a lot of trouble. But like I said, the existing Win10 install is all wonderful with the drivers etc.

 

[Underclocked]

I don't think I would mess with moving the Win10 install unless you have done a lot of customization to that install. A clean install on the new drive would probably take no more time than transferring the data from one drive to the other unless you have some hard to install drivers. I would make that clean install with the current operating drive disconnected to prevent any chance of it becoming corrupted. Then disconnect the drive you just installed Win10 on.

You should then be able to reconnect the Windows 7 drive and set it as the boot drive in bios. Once in Windows 7 you can then install Minitool Partition Wizard as well as EasyBCD. Alter the boot menu with EasyBCD as desired (I would just eliminate the Windows 10 entry) and then use Minitool to eliminate the Win10 partition and grow the Win7 partition to fill the extra space.

Then reconnect the fresh Win10 drive and set it to be the boot drive in bios. Boot 10, install EasyBCD and use it to add an entry for the Win7 drive using the drive letter assigned to the 7 drive by Windows 10. Make whichever OS you work with the most your default boot choice.

Your dual boot capability is now set so go to drive management in 10 and remove the drive letter(s) associated with the Win7 drive. Boot into 7 and do the same for the drive letters associated with 10.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't think I would mess with moving the Win10 install unless you have done a lot of customization to that install. A clean install on the new drive would probably take no more time than transferring the data from one drive to the other unless you have some hard to install drivers. I would make that clean install with the current operating drive disconnected to prevent any chance of it becoming corrupted. Then disconnect the drive you just installed Win10 on.

You should then be able to reconnect the Windows 7 drive and set it as the boot drive in bios. Once in Windows 7 you can then install Minitool Partition Wizard as well as EasyBCD. Alter the boot menu with EasyBCD as desired (I would just eliminate the Windows 10 entry) and then use Minitool to eliminate the Win10 partition and grow the Win7 partition to fill the extra space.

Then reconnect the fresh Win10 drive and set it to be the boot drive in bios. Boot 10, install EasyBCD and use it to add an entry for the Win7 drive using the drive letter assigned to the 7 drive by Windows 10. Make whichever OS you work with the most your default boot choice.

Your dual boot capability is now set so go to drive management in 10 and remove the drive letter(s) associated with the Win7 drive. Boot into 7 and do the same for the drive letters associated with 10.

I think you're right about this, and I'm pasting your post into Notepad so I can save it for further reference. Given that all my personal files -- most of them -- go directly to the home-server box, I can afford to experiment with my storage configuration on this workstation, and if there are more problems, I'll look in that folder of notes for further guidance.