One has xp pro and the other has Vista home premium. I want to be able to
have the option of using both hard drive's at the same time. As it is now, I
swap the hard drive in that I want to use and then swap it out for when i
need to go back to XP. Is there a way I can leave them both plugged in and
have an option on reboot to chose what OS I want?

Thanks.

You presently have each operating system on it's own hard drive. That means
that the boot code necessary for each operating system is on it's respective
drive. That is good.

What you now need is a third party boot manager (I have been using System
Commander from http://www.v-com.com/product/System_Commander_Home.html).
When installed, it will detect each O/S and place an option in the initial
boot screen to allow you to choose which one to boot into.

My feeling is that each operating system *should* be hidden from the other.
This way, if your copy of Windows XP becomes infected the infection will not
pass to Vista. There is an option in System Commander to allow you to hide
the system that you are *NOT* using.

If you just want a common area that is accessible to both operating systems
I would suggest that you create a new "logical partition on your largest
hard drive. You will have to shrink the partition that is currently there to
free up space. You can do this with Acronis Disk Director from
www.acronis.com. Then you would create a new partition in the unallocated
space. This partition would be visible/usable from both operating systems.
While there I would heartily recommend that you also get TrueImage HOME to
image your system partitions. The images can be stored on DVD, an external
USB hard drive or on the partition that you just created - space allowing.

You also have to physically set the hard drives in your computer as
master/slave if they are both connected to the same IDE channel. If each
drive is connected to a different IDE cable you would set them both as
master. If your computer has SATA drives each drive is already on it's own
channel and there are no master/slave settings.

--


Regards,

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



"Jeff" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:E35AE714-9EE6-454A-A8DF-(E-Mail Removed)...
> One has xp pro and the other has Vista home premium. I want to be able to
> have the option of using both hard drive's at the same time. As it is now,
> I
> swap the hard drive in that I want to use and then swap it out for when i
> need to go back to XP. Is there a way I can leave them both plugged in and
> have an option on reboot to chose what OS I want?
>
> Thanks.

Assuming you plan on installing the second drive in the slave position, in addition to Richard's advice on System Commander(a fine program) other options would be using an optional program installed in XP or Vista(install it in the o/s that boots from the primary drive when both drives are connected.
Optional programs for setting up a dual boot system.
EasyBCD
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
VistaBootPro
http://www.vistabootpro.org/index.php
BootItNg
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html
The first two are free programs.

Before proceeding with any of the above..read this article about required files, sequence to follow,etc
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=84455

Good Luck.
..winston


"Jeff" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:E35AE714-9EE6-454A-A8DF-(E-Mail Removed)...
: One has xp pro and the other has Vista home premium. I want to be able to
: have the option of using both hard drive's at the same time. As it is now, I
: swap the hard drive in that I want to use and then swap it out for when i
: need to go back to XP. Is there a way I can leave them both plugged in and
: have an option on reboot to chose what OS I want?
:
: Thanks.