How to get to dual boot from two hard drives?

  • Thread starter Thread starter just bob
  • Start date Start date
J

just bob

For my Dell D820 laptop I've got two hard drives I swap in an out of the HD
slot, depending if I want to run Vista or XP.

I'd like to take both of these installations and merge them on a single hard
drive.

I'm guessing I could ghost my XP to a new HD and leave enough room for a new
Vista install.

But I'd rather not have to install all my Vista apps again so is there a way
to take the partitions from two hard drives and merge them onto one hard
drive in a dual boot?

Better than that would be if I could somehow merge the XP hard drive into a
VPC on Vista. But I'm not sure I'm able to make the VPC with XP see the
Vista files, and take full advantage of the entire CPU and RAM.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

-Bob
 
Plug both HD in.......remember their BIOS designation..HD 0 HD 1 dont
forget the jumpers for slave/master..unless its SATA HD.Check the BIOS
settings for 1st boot device.
Start with XP
from within XP insert the Vista CD and do a Repair installation of
Vista..follow the instruction for a new install until you come to the page
where it will ask you if you wish to do a "repair" and shows you your HD's
This should set up a dual boot ...with the Vista MBR overwriting the XP one
on the C drive
Now when you restart you should be given a choice of which OS to start
with..Vista or XP.
A Repair installation should not destroy any of your Data or Settings on
either setup but it does place all of the files necesary for booting on the
C drive...so if you ever decide to get rid of XP you cannot just format that
drive without losing the ability to boot at all.Another little oddball when
your in XP that OS will report itself on the C drive and when your in Vista
that OS will report itself as being on the C drive..............think about
it,sometimes it just easier to do as you are doing.On My System I can push
an F12 to display the option of which HD to boot from so it was easier to
set up without dual boot option...because when I decide to get rid of XP I
can just format and not have to play with the new Vista boot loader.
peter
 
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