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Hope someone can help me here. I have my copy of windows 7 ordered and will be getting it this Friday. I have two hard drives, 160 and 500 GB. I just got the 500 GB drive and would like to keep it just for storage. My 160 has everything else on it. I do not have the 160 drive partitioned and would like to install W7 on it, but keep XP on it also.

Here is my question, if I put in my XP install disk and create a partition with that(thus installing XP a second time on the same drive but on a different partition, will I lose any info? Or does anyone know if W7 has a partition device on its boot disk?

Hope this is clear.

estabu2 wrote:

Hope someone can help me here. I have my copy of windows 7 ordered and will be getting it this Friday. I have two hard drives, 160 and 500 GB. I just got the 500 GB drive and would like to keep it just for storage. My 160 has everything else on it. I do not have the 160 drive partitioned and would like to install W7 on it, but keep XP on it also.

Here is my question, if I put in my XP install disk and create a partition with that(thus installing XP a second time on the same drive but on a different partition, will I lose any info? Or does anyone know if W7 has a partition device on its boot disk?

Hope this is clear.

If you have XP on a single partition then you will lose your info when creating the second partition. So if you want to dual boot, you'll need to backup your data, start the XP install, create two partitions, install XP on C, then W7 on D:.

Or if you really don't want to re-install windows, you could always create a partition on the 500 gig drive (probably what I would do). So have a 100 gig partition for W7, and 400 gigs for storage.

My very Warmest Greetings, estabu:

First allow me to express my great respect for you for your contributions here and in other Forums.

My own experience goes far enough back to remember having no difficulty dual-booting Win95 and 98 together, and Win 98 and XP together without an aftermarket dual-boot product. I also had no difficulty dual-booting XP with a quality Linux distro such as SUSe, as the disk-partitioning software within SUSe handled Windows easily (provided XP was installed first).

XP was my workhorse of choice for many years, provided it was locked-down and secured by nearly 50 aftermarket pieces of nonMS freeware in order to keep it stable, secure and in order. From my experience with Windows thus far, I expect no conflicts on dual-booting multiple different MS products in different partitions.

Much like other operating systems (such as OpenBSD), Windows likes to have the first partitions on a drive. I have to admit the enormous amount of bad professional press that accompanied the release of Vista encouraged me to delay using it; suffice it to say I’ll be waiting for the first SP for Win7 to see how that one goes. Security and stability are my foremost concerns to say the least.

It may be enough to say I’m beginning to view XP and Microsoft operating systems generally as single-purpose legacy systems in order to run those two or three programs I want to keep around and be able to run: SMA/SMG, TC2M, and soon SOW-G. I see I’m already going to have to dedicate a machine to this exclusively.

I myself have gravitated to an OpenBSD machine running virtualized FreeBSD, using a much-improved KDE as my GUI. I have yet to see if programs such as TC2M and SOW-G can be emulated in WINE without serious performance losses. I could use some advice in this area myself.

And from what I’ve been able to piece together, installing two copies of the same Windows OS on the same computer with just one drive, despite partitioning, isn’t possible (because the boot manager isn‘t able to distinguish between the two different installs), but I admit my experience is limited. I understand it IS possible on machines having two separate disk drives using an aftermarket drive manager.

All my very best to you sir. I hope I may have helped in some small way.

Sincerely,

Odox

Odox wrote:

And from what I’ve been able to piece together, installing two copies of the same Windows OS on the same computer with just one drive, despite partitioning, isn’t possible (because the boot manager isn‘t able to distinguish between the two different installs)

Actually this is possible, I've done it many times. I actually have a PC setup like this now. One XP Pro for me, and one XP Pro (same OS) for my kids.

Little Powell wrote:

estabu2 wrote:

Hope someone can help me here. I have my copy of windows 7 ordered and will be getting it this Friday. I have two hard drives, 160 and 500 GB. I just got the 500 GB drive and would like to keep it just for storage. My 160 has everything else on it. I do not have the 160 drive partitioned and would like to install W7 on it, but keep XP on it also.

Here is my question, if I put in my XP install disk and create a partition with that(thus installing XP a second time on the same drive but on a different partition, will I lose any info? Or does anyone know if W7 has a partition device on its boot disk?

Hope this is clear.

If you have XP on a single partition then you will lose your info when creating the second partition. So if you want to dual boot, you'll need to backup your data, start the XP install, create two partitions, install XP on C, then W7 on D:.

Or if you really don't want to re-install windows, you could always create a partition on the 500 gig drive (probably what I would do). So have a 100 gig partition for W7, and 400 gigs for storage.

So, if I put Win7 on the 500GB drive, do a partition, do I need to put that as the primary drive or will it ask me if I want to boot XP or Win7 at start up?

estabu2 wrote:

Little Powell wrote:

estabu2 wrote:

Hope someone can help me here. I have my copy of windows 7 ordered and will be getting it this Friday. I have two hard drives, 160 and 500 GB. I just got the 500 GB drive and would like to keep it just for storage. My 160 has everything else on it. I do not have the 160 drive partitioned and would like to install W7 on it, but keep XP on it also.

Here is my question, if I put in my XP install disk and create a partition with that(thus installing XP a second time on the same drive but on a different partition, will I lose any info? Or does anyone know if W7 has a partition device on its boot disk?

Hope this is clear.

If you have XP on a single partition then you will lose your info when creating the second partition. So if you want to dual boot, you'll need to backup your data, start the XP install, create two partitions, install XP on C, then W7 on D:.

Or if you really don't want to re-install windows, you could always create a partition on the 500 gig drive (probably what I would do). So have a 100 gig partition for W7, and 400 gigs for storage.

So, if I put Win7 on the 500GB drive, do a partition, do I need to put that as the primary drive or will it ask me if I want to boot XP or Win7 at start up?

I've never dual booted W7 before, but it should not matter which one is set as the primary drive. As long as one of the OS's is on C, and the other is on D, then it should ask you at startup. You should have a choice between XP and Win7 when you first boot the machine.

Here is another question for you Matt. I found a, what seems to be a good free tool, program that will create some unallocated HD space on my C: drive. Thus creating space to put a second partition on that drive. If I already have the partition created do I still need to back up all my info, even though their would be nothing on that partition except for Win7.

So if I have a free partition on my C: drive, I should be able to load up Win7 and duel boot from there? Sorry to keep blasting you with these questions, hehe.

estabu2 wrote:

Here is another question for you Matt. I found a, what seems to be a good free tool, program that will create some unallocated HD space on my C: drive. Thus creating space to put a second partition on that drive. If I already have the partition created do I still need to back up all my info, even though their would be nothing on that partition except for Win7.

So if I have a free partition on my C: drive, I should be able to load up Win7 and duel boot from there? Sorry to keep blasting you with these questions, hehe.

No need to apologize.. Just helping a brother out. :laugh:

That sounds like a very cool tool. If you can get it to create a seperate D: partition, than by all means you should be able to load W7 on that one and duel boot.

Killer deal, probably gonna give it a try tonight or tomorrow.

Hi there.

I have Windows XP on my 120 Gb drive. After awhile I wanted to install Vista, so I created a partition (I use Partiion Magic)in Windows xp, and once I created it, made it active, I rebooted my system, so partition magic did it's changes, Windows XP started back up, and now a new drive is born. Then I installed Windows Vista. Then after a couple of months I got bored, and created another partition for Windows 7, installed that (same procedure as before). Now I have three operating systems because of Partition Magic.

Now, my understanding is the way the boot record is understood, you cannot install Windows 7, then windows xp, then windows vista.

This is the way it's suppose to be installed.

1:) Windows XP
2:) Windows Vista
3:) Windows 7

Mind you, I did do an Experiment just to see what would happen, and I had two drives installed quite awhile back, and I had Windows XP installed, and I wanted to have Windows 98se installed, but of course you can't do that, so what i did was I went into my bios, switched my boot from drive C to drive D (my second HD), rebooted the system just to make sure it worked, and I got the message telling me it couldn't boot from dive D. So now I rebooted the system, had my windows 98se in the cdrom drive, then I installed that to drive D (which is now drive C:).

Then I went back into the bios, switched everything back to normal (drive C being C, and Drive D being D etc.)

Now when I rebooted of course it went straight into Windows XP because the new install of Windows 98se was not written into the boot record.

Now I went ahead and installed multiboot (not a bad piece of software)software that was able to scan your Harddrives looking for Operating systems, and low and behold it had Windows 98se listed along with Windows XP as operating systems. Once I chose to add Windows 98se (in the multiboot software)as a boot option, this software created it's own boot record.

Once that was done I now had two operating systems.

I did reverse it of course just to see what would happen, and after I uninstalled Windows 98se, it booted back into Windows XP normally...

Okay...I know...I was bored..

Later!