Step by step instructions for instaling on two HDD's

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
Hi John,

Pretty much, yes. Install the drive, insert the DVD and boot up. Run setup,
use the drive tools to create a partition on the SATA drive and format it.
Installation will create the dual boot (and incidentally, this will be on
the existing IDE drive). There is a chance, though slight, that you may need
a SATA driver from the motherboard maker, but many are natively supported.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Install your new hard drive. Disconnect your old one. Boot from the DVD. If
you leave the IDE drive connected, Vista will write some of the basic boot
code to the IDE drive. This may, or may not, cause problems in the future.

I certainly have problems with it. I must disconnect my 2 IDE drives or I
will stuff one of the IDE drives when installing Vista to a SATA drive.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Hi Richard,

In this case, I wouldn't disconnect the IDE drive, as OP will need to write
the bootloader someplace, and as XP is already installed there this would be
the logical place for it. The problems with mixing the two drive types occur
mainly when the individual is trying to install the bootstrap to the SATA
drive with an IDE in place, or if writing to the boot sector on the IDE
drive is being blocked (active AV or some such). If disconnected during
setup, OP will need to use the system BIOS to designate which drive (system)
to boot each time they start or want to switch OS's, or it will default to
the IDE drive and ntldr (which cannot load Vista).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
It is in your better interest to use a third party boot manager like BootIt
NG which will enable you to hide the non booting drive from the other.
BootIt NG is inexpensive and has a fully functional 30day trial.
 
If the O/P decides "after the fact" to go with a third party boot loader,
Vista will not boot.

The advantage of the third party boot loaders is that you can totally hide
one operating system from the other. Get a trojan/worm that deletes all your
..exe files on one system - the other will still operate just fine.

Also, what happens in my case is this.

I have 4 drives - 2 SATA and 2 IDE. The IDE drives are set up as logical
partitions. This leaves 8 meg of unallocated space at the front of the
drive.

If I forget and start a Vista install with the IDE drives connected, Vista
will start to load data to the 8 meg space. Of course, 8 meg is not enough
room for anything. The remainder then loads to the SATA drive I "want" to
install to.

Vista will boot properly, but any information that is on the IDE drive
becomes "unusable". If you check the drive with either Disk Director or the
Native Vista management tools it will tell you that the entire drive is
corrupted and not accessable.

Believe me, I lost about 3000 photos and many hundreds of songs because of
this. Thank goodness for my backups.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Back
Top