dual-boot - how to make second hard drive on XP machine a separate XP bootable OS?

[Paul]

I have a single hard drive system running XP Pro. The hard drive is old and
noisy so I bought a new hard drive. Now I want to migrate to the new hard.
I'd like ot take it slowly without erasing anything yet so I've decided to
add the second HD and I want to install it with XP Pro and make it a bual
boot machine until I am certain I get everything from the first original.

How do I:
- start the install process for the 2nd hard drive?
- make it dual boot when I start the machine?

Thanks for any help or links to articles.

 

[Dom]

Hi

Why don't you rather try cloning the old HDD to the new one? That's how
I upgraded the HDD in my laptop (not to mention countless clients'
PC's).

You won't have to worry about losing any data, and it's much easier
than what you're trying to do.

As for cloning software, you can try either Acronis Easy Migrate or
Paragon Drive Backup 8 Personal. I find they work pretty well.

 

[Paul]

Hi

Why don't you rather try cloning the old HDD to the new one? That's how
I upgraded the HDD in my laptop (not to mention countless clients'
PC's).

You won't have to worry about losing any data, and it's much easier
than what you're trying to do.

As for cloning software, you can try either Acronis Easy Migrate or
Paragon Drive Backup 8 Personal. I find they work pretty well.

Will it transfer HDD fragmented or will the new disk layout will
defragmented?

 

[Dom]

I don't think drive cloning software defragments as it clones, so I
always just run a defrag after finishing the clone procedure to be
safe.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I have a single hard drive system running XP Pro. The hard drive
is old and noisy so I bought a new hard drive. Now I want to
migrate to the new hard. I'd like ot take it slowly without erasing
anything yet so I've decided to add the second HD and I want to
install it with XP Pro and make it a dual boot machine until I am
certain I get everything from the first original.

By cloning the old HD, you will get EVERYTHING - even the
viruses and spyware. But what the hey, life is about the
grit as well as the cream.

There are many cloning utilities, the top 2 being Ghost and
True Image. Ghost has the advantage in that it can clone
individual partitions, being able to take one from among several
partitions and able to place it among several partitions on the
destination hard drive. But for cloning the entire HD and making
the contents fill the entire destination HD, both are good. I, though,
use Casper XP, which is dedicated to cloning and which has
Ghost's single partition capability. (See:
www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp/). They have a free 30-day
trial version that you can download, but its capability is restricted
to making the new partition the same size as the original partition.
Since you probably want to make a larger partition on your new
HD, you may want to use the paid version ($50) of Casper XP
or Ghost or True Image. Another possibility is to download a
cloning utility for your brand of HD from the manufacturer's website.

Once you've completed the cloning, don't start up the clone
right away. First disconnect the source HD. That will accomplish
2 things - it will prevent the clone from seeing its "parent" at its
1st startup and thereby prevent it from forming links between its
file system and files in the "parent", and it will automatically move
the 2nd HD to the head of the BIOS's HD boot order, causing the
clone's loader to take control at boot time. Then, just fire up the
PC normally to boot the clone. Put a folder on the Desktop of
the clone so as to distinguish it visually from the "parent" OS, or
change the background scene on the clone's Desktop. Then
shut down the PC and re-connect the old HD.

At this point, you can dual-boot by switching the order of the HD
in the HD boot order of the BIOS. When you want to switch to
the other OS, go into the BIOS at POST (just before actual loading
occurs) and reverse the position of the 2 HDs in the HD boot order
(NOT the *device* boot order).

Otherwise, you can accomplish dual-booting by adding another
entry in the boot.ini file of the old HD's active partition (probably
the same partition as the OS) and increasing the timeout to, say
"10" (standing for 10 seconds). The 2nd entry that you make in
boot.ini under the line "[operating systems]" should be identical
to the 1st entry except that "rdisk(0)" should be made to be "rdisk(1)".
Boot.ini can be found just below the root of the file structure, at
C:\boot.ini, and you can edit it with Notepad. You may have to
"unhide" system files to do this. Otherwise, you can edit it by
running msconfig and going to the tab marked "Boot.ini" and
either editing it manually or simply clicking "Check all boot paths".
You can set the character string after the "=" sign to be anything
that you feel will describe to you which OS it's associated with.
Thereafter, you'll be presented with a menu of 2 choices at boot
time, each choice indicated by the character string that you put
into boot.ini. Highlight the choice by using the up and down arrows
on the keyboard, and hit Enter. The corresponding OS will load.
Have fun!

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Once you've completed the cloning, don't start up the clone
right away. First disconnect the source HD....

It's OK to start up the "PARENT" OS immediately after
cloning. Just don't start up the CLONE for its first time
without removing (or hiding) the "parent" OS. Some
cloners (e.g. Casper XP) even leave the "parent" running
throughout the cloning process. One thing you may want
to do is to defrag the clone since the cloning process
carries over the fragmented state of the files as they were
in the "parent", and another is to put some marker on the
clone's Desktop to indicate visually that it is the clone
before actually running the clone. Something *I* do is to
annotate the character strings in the clone's boot.ini file
to indicate in its boot menu which partition and which HD
the menu is coming from. I commonly multi-boot 6 or
more XP versions, and each has its own multi-boot menu
so I can boot using any partition in any of my 3 HDs. In such
scenarios, it helps to always know which partition is
controlling the booting.

 

[AJR]

Just curious - but why don't you use the utilities provided with the new HD
to migrate old drive to the new?

I have a single hard drive system running XP Pro. The hard drive
is old and noisy so I bought a new hard drive. Now I want to
migrate to the new hard. I'd like ot take it slowly without erasing
anything yet so I've decided to add the second HD and I want to
install it with XP Pro and make it a dual boot machine until I am
certain I get everything from the first original.

By cloning the old HD, you will get EVERYTHING - even the
viruses and spyware. But what the hey, life is about the
grit as well as the cream.

There are many cloning utilities, the top 2 being Ghost and
True Image. Ghost has the advantage in that it can clone
individual partitions, being able to take one from among several
partitions and able to place it among several partitions on the
destination hard drive. But for cloning the entire HD and making
the contents fill the entire destination HD, both are good. I, though,
use Casper XP, which is dedicated to cloning and which has
Ghost's single partition capability. (See:
www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp/). They have a free 30-day
trial version that you can download, but its capability is restricted
to making the new partition the same size as the original partition.
Since you probably want to make a larger partition on your new
HD, you may want to use the paid version ($50) of Casper XP
or Ghost or True Image. Another possibility is to download a
cloning utility for your brand of HD from the manufacturer's website.

Once you've completed the cloning, don't start up the clone
right away. First disconnect the source HD. That will accomplish
2 things - it will prevent the clone from seeing its "parent" at its
1st startup and thereby prevent it from forming links between its
file system and files in the "parent", and it will automatically move
the 2nd HD to the head of the BIOS's HD boot order, causing the
clone's loader to take control at boot time. Then, just fire up the
PC normally to boot the clone. Put a folder on the Desktop of
the clone so as to distinguish it visually from the "parent" OS, or
change the background scene on the clone's Desktop. Then
shut down the PC and re-connect the old HD.

At this point, you can dual-boot by switching the order of the HD
in the HD boot order of the BIOS. When you want to switch to
the other OS, go into the BIOS at POST (just before actual loading
occurs) and reverse the position of the 2 HDs in the HD boot order
(NOT the *device* boot order).

Otherwise, you can accomplish dual-booting by adding another
entry in the boot.ini file of the old HD's active partition (probably
the same partition as the OS) and increasing the timeout to, say
"10" (standing for 10 seconds). The 2nd entry that you make in
boot.ini under the line "[operating systems]" should be identical
to the 1st entry except that "rdisk(0)" should be made to be
"rdisk(1)".
Boot.ini can be found just below the root of the file structure, at
C:\boot.ini, and you can edit it with Notepad. You may have to
"unhide" system files to do this. Otherwise, you can edit it by
running msconfig and going to the tab marked "Boot.ini" and
either editing it manually or simply clicking "Check all boot paths".
You can set the character string after the "=" sign to be anything
that you feel will describe to you which OS it's associated with.
Thereafter, you'll be presented with a menu of 2 choices at boot
time, each choice indicated by the character string that you put
into boot.ini. Highlight the choice by using the up and down arrows
on the keyboard, and hit Enter. The corresponding OS will load.
Have fun!

*TimDaniels*

 

[Paul]

The system has slowed down a LOT over the last year and I've been advised to
reload the OS and files. I have the disks to reinstall all the software.

BTW, when I defrag, it still hundreds of files in the graphical front-end,
that are still fragmented.

What about this option:
- unlpug the old HD, making the new HD the master and install OS to new HD.
Once the new HD has the OS, I can add the old HD as a slave and get any
files I need - files not programs.

I know several people who do this annually because it keeps their older
system running faster.

My main goal is to make it faster loading and faster to open programs. I
don't have the latest hardware (P3 2.6Ghx, 1.5 G RAM, 40GB HD) but it can
literally take 2 minutes for ACT 2005! to start . I know it starts MSDE
database engine but come on!

If I do this, does it makes sense to do two partitions on new HD, one for OS
and one for all user files? if so, how big should OS partition be?

Many thanks!

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The system has slowed down a LOT over the last year and I've been
advised to reload the OS and files. I have the disks to reinstall
all the software.

Although there are those who often recommend this, I am in the opposite
camp. If you do this, you will create a lot of work for yourself, you may
well end up with additional problems, and--most important--since you never
found out what your problem was, you will likely repeat the behavior that
caused it, and quickly find yourself back in the same situation.

Most slowdowns these days are caused by malware infestations, and my guess
is that that's your problem. If I'm right, reinstalling instead of
addressing the problem will result in a lot of work for you to yield a very
temporary improvement.

I know several people who do this annually because it keeps their
older system running faster.

Unfortunately, I do too. I know many people who do it annually, or more
often. They are all, in my view, ignorant people who don't take the trouble
to find out how to maintain their systems carefully. I've run Windows 3.0,
3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, each
for the period of time before the next version came out, and each on two
machines here. I never reinstalled any of them, and I have never had
anything more than an occasional minor problem.

My main goal is to make it faster loading and faster to open
programs. I don't have the latest hardware (P3 2.6Ghx, 1.5 G RAM,
40GB HD) but it can literally take 2 minutes for ACT 2005! to start .
I know it starts MSDE database engine but come on!

If I do this, does it makes sense to do two partitions on new HD, one
for OS and one for all user files? if so, how big should OS
partition be?

There is no simple answer to this question that's right for everyone. People
have widely differing views on this, with
recommendations ranging from a single partition to four, five, or more
partitions. My view is that most people's partitioning scheme should be
based on their backup scheme. If, for example, you backup by creating a
clone or image on the entire drive, then a single partition might be best.
If, on the other hand, you backup only your data, then the backup process is
facilitated by having all data in a separate partition.

Except for those running multiple operating systems, rarely does it make
sense to have more than two partitions, and it almost never makes sense to
separate programs in a separate partition from the operating system.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup


Reply

 

[Paul]

Paul wrote:
Although there are those who often recommend this, I am in the opposite
camp. If you do this, you will create a lot of work for yourself, you may
well end up with additional problems, and--most important--since you never
found out what your problem was, you will likely repeat the behavior that
caused it, and quickly find yourself back in the same situation.

Most slowdowns these days are caused by malware infestations, and my guess
is that that's your problem. If I'm right, reinstalling instead of
addressing the problem will result in a lot of work for you to yield a
very temporary improvement.

I use Spybot and adaware weekly, disk clean-up tool and manually remove temp
and other files, and defrag often. None of this has helped.

You say people who annually reinstall are ignorant and yet admit to doing it
yourself?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"AJR" asked:

Just curious - but why don't you use the utilities provided with the new HD
to migrate old drive to the new?

The OP may have bought his HD as an OEM product, or he
may have bought it at a swap meet, or maybe his HD's
manufacturer doesn't make it clear that there is a download
webpage to download such a utility. I, for one, have not had
any luck using HD manufacturer's cloning utilities, but that
might just be my luck

*TimDaniels*.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

news:[email protected]...

You say people who annually reinstall are ignorant and yet admit to
doing it yourself?

Not at all. I have never reinstalled, annually or otherwise, and didn't say
anything to the contrary.

 

[Paul]

Not at all. I have never reinstalled, annually or otherwise, and didn't
say anything to the contrary.

I misuinderstood when you said, "Unfortunately, I do too", I thought you
meant you reinstall. What you meant was you know people like that too.

Got it

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I misuinderstood when you said, "Unfortunately, I do too", I thought
you meant you reinstall. What you meant was you know people like
that too.

Ah, I understand, now. Sorry to have confused you.

Ken