XP+Vista : 'Hardware' Dual-boot

[lopri]

Instead of messing with BCDEdit or bootloader, I'd like to have the system in such a way whenenever i decide to get rid of either of these OSes in the future, I won't notice any left-over from the bygone. So I figured, with 3 physical HDDs (herein, A, B, C)

1. Install XP on disk A. No other disks presents in the system. Once that's done,
2. Install Visita on disk B. Of course there is no other disks involved in this install.

So we have a disk A: (clean XP installation), B: (clean Vista installation), and Cfor data)

I can just hook all three of them and turn the system on. Since we know that there is the "Change the boot seqence for the HDD" option in the BIOS. So when I want to boot Vista, I changed the sequence to B->A, and vice versa. The 3rd disk will have a drive letter either D: or E:, right niext to the boot HDD. and if boot in XP, it's going to be,,

XP disk - Datadisk - Vistadisk (When XP disk given boot priority from the BIOS)
Vista disk - Datadisk - XP disk (When Vista disk given boot proirity from the BIOS)

Basically I'd like to set a dual-boot setup, and would like have the ability to get rid of one OS as if nothing happened.

Other than a few more clicks on BIOS and 30 extra secs, is there any other reason that this setup is not advisable?

I'd like your opinions. Thanks!

 

[mechBgon]

It works fine in practice, yep. The drive letters won't come out in the way you've posted, but it all comes out in the wash.

If your motherboard has a hotkey for calling up a boot-device menu at POST (such as the F8 key on recent Asus motherboards) then you do not need to go into the BIOS at all.

 

[lopri]

Thank you, mech.

 

[Arkaign]

This is awesome, and the only way I EVER recommend dual-booting. Works for any OS btw. Install individually on seperate drives, while the target drive is the only one plugged in. On my bench box at work I have :

750GB Seagate : Vista Home Premium
500GB Seagate : XP Pro SP2
500GB WD : Win2k3 Server R2
120GB WD : Ubuntu
160GB Maxtor : Win2k SP4

Just choose at boot from the bios hotkey which to boot into.
95% of the time, it's XP

 

[almach1]

i never thought of this system. that way you have 2 different boot files. and not one that decides what to boot into.

 

[jkresh]

I have been using this for years, never had 5 systems on it, but I did at one point have wink 2k, Beos, and some version of Red Hat. Currently using it for XP and vista, with vmware for ubuntu.

 

[mancunian]

This is now what I do as well. It is FAR better for numerous reasons. Avoiding messing with bootloaders is one good reason.

But something I find useful is being able to image one OS from within another. Takes about 6-7 mins to restore an image.

I have XP on C almost always Vista on D, and whenever I need another OS other than XP or Vista, I just image the one I need from within XP using Acronis True Image 10. So I have another 2 images, Ubuntu and W2K (which never gets used, dunno why I have it). F8 on bootup and select second drive and there it is, a nice clean Linux installation to use.

95% of the time I have XP and Vista to choose from with the F8 key.

The main reason I did it this way was to simplify restoring XP without having to do the DOS style restore, which takes longer than 6-7 minutes.