Dual boot question

[Storm_Force]

Got myself a new 1TB samsung F3 spinpoint HD, I still want to be able to boot into my existing win 7 just encase I have forogt to backup anything.

Am I correct in assuming the following:

Install new HD.
Boot PC with Win 7 disk and install on new HD.
I should then have my old hd with running old Win7 and the new HD with a fresh install on.
I then get a boot option on startup to select which one to boot to.

Is that correct? (never done dual boot before)

 

[rich-6]

Wouldnt think it'd work, unless you set the bios to boot from one hdd only. Why can't you just set your new drive as a slave and keep your current with your os on. That's all I've done in the past I had a drive full of music and games and kept my other disk pretty much empty.

I'm not a computer gimp and don't know a great deal it's just what I'd have thought, I'm sure ive read on google it causes crashes been two startup.sys files too.

 

[Dm_26]

It won't give you the option no, it will just boot off whichever HD your BIOS is set to boot off first.

You can set one to the master HD and another to a slave HD, that way it will boot from one and you can access the other via My Computer, it will be listed as another hard drive

 

[Jon.G]

No this wont work. it has to be a earlier version IE Vista for you to be able to dual boot.
Although you could just unplug your current HDD install 7 on your new HDD then plug in which ever OS HDD you needed at a particular point. You should be able to view all files in My Computer from either HDD when both are connected.

 

[Storm_Force]

Ok will have a look later at setting the jumpers.

I did have an issue before with win XP that I couldn't see my document folders etc when viewing from Vista due to permissions it was a right pain in the arse as I had to keep changing the jumpers around and then booting into xp. Hopefully won't have this issue with win7

 

[muld]

What are you lot on? You can certainly have two Windows 7 installs, even on the same drive (if partitioned). I have done this numerous times.

 

[muld]

It won't give you the option no, it will just boot off whichever HD your BIOS is set to boot off first.

Sorry but this is not right, Windows will simply create the boot record on the master drive, this will contain the information necessary to select which install to boot.

 

[muld]

No this wont work. it has to be a earlier version IE Vista for you to be able to dual boot.
Although you could just unplug your current HDD install 7 on your new HDD then plug in which ever OS HDD you needed at a particular point. You should be able to view all files in My Computer from either HDD when both are connected.

The second O/S version/type is irrelevant...

DO NOT unplug your old drive, this WILL stop it being able to create the boot record for dual boot when installing the second OS!! How can it create the dual boot menu when it doesn't know the original O/S exists!? rofl

 

[Dm_26]

Sorry but this is not right, Windows will simply create the boot record on the master drive, this will contain the information necessary to select which install to boot.

He is talking about adding a second hard drive?
This way he has a Master and a Slave drive with the BIOS booting off the master drive.

If he partitioned the master drive and added two seperate OS installs then it would ask which one you want to boot but since its two different hard drives with jumpers to state Master and Slave then it will not ask, it will just boot from the master

I have 4 HDs in my computer, all with OS installs but it only boots off the master and allows me to view all the files in my other HDs

 

[muld]

Yea... Add second drive as slave.

(partitioning was just an example, he doesn't need to partition anything in this case)

Why are we booting from any drives? You will Boot from Win 7 DVD initially, choose new install to slave drive. This will create the boot record on the master drive (so when you boot again, as you said the master will be detected and used, but since it now contains the new boot record it will ask which O/S you want), leaving the existing partition and installing the new O/S to the slave drive.

You seem to have disconnected your drives to install the other O/S's which is why you have no boot record on your master drive for any other O/S there are programs you can use to manually create this record so you could select each of your O/S at boot.

PS: I know this is true, I work in support and have done this a million times lol. I'm looking at a dual boot win 7 system with installs on different drives as we speak. Only difference with that setup is it's Ubuntu + Win 7, but the principal is the same (although the Ubuntu boot manager is much better).

 

[Storm_Force]

LOL I am confused now.

Just to recap on my situation, I have one HD on my pc which is cluttered and is running like pooo. It had xp then I updraged to vista then upgraded to Win 7. I have purchased another new HD that I want to do a fresh install on, for the time being I still want to be able to access my old hard drive to retrevie documents / pictures / game saves etc that I may have forgot to backup.

So if I install my new hd and install win 7 on it will windows automatically give the option to choose which to boot to?

 

[muld]

Yep, pretty much, although this will create the mbr (master boot record) on the "old" drive, so when you remove this you may (will) have issues. It sounds like you want to just have a single boot but access to the old files? In this case you probably do want to whip out the old drive, put the new one in (set it as master) install windows 7 fresh, then put the old drive in (set it as slave). This will just automatically boot the new OS and you can then access your old files as the D drive on that system.

In your original post you said you wanted the option of booting to either O/S, your later post you say u just want access to the files.

In summary,

If you want a boot menu and access to both operating systems you need to have both drives installed when you install the new O/S. One as slave, one as master.
If you want the fresh O/S only and access to the old files from within there, as a D drive for example, do as I just said with only 1 drive connected when you install the O/S.

 

[Mark5290]

No need to create a dual boot environment, unplug old HDD SATA lead, connect up new HDD to a free SATA header, start up pc, go into the bios and make sure the new HDD is showing up in the list to boot from, go to boot order and select 1st device as the cd/dvd rom, select the new HDD as the second device, put in the windows dvd, restart pc and install windows, once installed switch off pc, re-connect old HDD SATA lead, restart pc and windows will find a new device, the old HDD you re-connected, once windows has started, go to my computer and you will find another HDD has been added and a drive letter assigned to it, if the drive letter is higher than the cd/dvd rom, you can go into disk management and assign a lower drive letter so HDD's appear as C: and D: and CD/DVD E:, now you can just click on the new HDD and open up the folders that you want to copy over the files you need.

 

[Storm_Force]

ok will try that thanks for the advice guys.