XP & Vista on separate HDD's ?

[Zenoth]

I've never tried to run more than one OS before, and I know many people regularly do so without any problems. I just wanted to know if it was as simple as installing one OS on one HDD, and then install the other OS on the other HDD ... and then to just manually select from which of the HDD I want to boot in the BIOS, and then I'd be set up ?

Right now, I have XP running on a C:\ Drive, on another, older computer, as it always did (My main system, shown in my sig, is on Vista). But I will get rid of the computer on which XP is running, soon. So I was thinking, to just keep the HDD on which my XP installation is, and make that HDD a slave for my Vista system, so that system will then have two physical HDD's.

In such a case, would it be possible to leave my Vista install on the C:\ Drive, and then set the new HDD coming from my XP system as a Slave, thus making it a D:\ Drive, and just leave XP on it ? Would booting from my Vista Drive be alright ? If it works, then how will the D:\ Drive be considered by Vista ? Will it be seen as a mere HDD on which I can install whatever I want disregarding the XP installation that's on it ? Additionally, if it works, if I boot from my D:\ Drive, which is the XP installation, then would XP consider the C:\ Drive (on which Vista in installed) like a normal HDD also ignoring Vista itself ?

I just want to make sure if it'd work, or not.

Thanks.

 

[Athena]

Installing a second OS to dual boot is easy -- both Vista and XP support that natively. When you dual boot, the other drive is seen as a data drive. There are some permission issues with Vista volumes though. Another gotcha is that system restore won't work if you have booted into the other OS after you create the restore point.

It's not as easy as just adding a drive with the other OS already installed though. The boot sector on your primary drive would have to be edited to recognize the other OS.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Athena
Installing a second OS to dual boot is easy -- both Vista and XP support that natively. When you dual boot, the other drive is seen as a data drive. There are some permission issues with Vista volumes though. Another gotcha is that system restore won't work if you have booted into the other OS after you create the restore point.

Are you sure about that? SR points are saved under the machine GUID for exactly this reason, the ability for multiple OS's to save to the SR folder without conflict...

 

[Zenoth]

Ok, in other words, it would work.

Now, what about the drivers and the games ?

If I boot with my XP Drive (D:\), then it would load the configuration and drivers I've had on it, disregarding drivers and configuration from Vista, right ? Also, what about games ? For example, I have Lost Planet Demo (many others, but just taking that one as an example) installed on my Vista Drive, so if I boot using XP, would I be able to start up the game without a problem, or would I need to actually re-install the Demo entirely on the XP Drive itself ?

 

[zagood]

1. You might be able to pull off dual boot in ghetto fashion...tell the BIOS which HD to load first in your boot order, and don't ID the other one to boot.

2. Anything installed on the XP drive will not run in Vista, and vice-versa.

3. You should be able to access the data on both hard drives as long as they're both plugged in, just not boot from both (vista will take priority unless you follow #1).

See this article for some good guides:
http://apcmag.com/node/5162/

EDIT: In addition, unless you had exactly the same hardware in both systems, your XP disc will have the wrong drivers loaded on it...motherboard, video, sound, everything. Could work, might not.

-z