Does Vista Home Prem. OS support setup of two bootable hard drives

[Guest]

I 'd appreciate some help here. MS phone tech support recommened going to a
forum for this. Computer and OS is fine, I just want to do something I don't
know how to do yet.

Wanted:
Want to Add a 2nd bootable HD (same as 1st or master) as insurance against
HD failure. Upon Bootup, I want to be able to select which HD to use. Both
HDs will have Vista on C: and XP on the partion D: I may delete D: later
because I only use Vista.

I have done this:
With 1st HD disconnected, I formatted & installed 2nd HD with XP, then Vista
UpGrade, Norton, Office, Adobe, etc. Worked absolutely great!
Then I reconnected 1st HD to Sata 1 on motherbd, and 2nd HD to Sata 2 on
Motherbd. Boots up on 1st HD, everything works great but 2nd HD acts as a
great backup drive but will not boot-up as it did when it was alone (there is
no option to boot up to it). Windows Explorer shows 2nd HD as F: and Partion
is G:

I am fairly confident nothing is wrong and it is doing what is expected. I
need to know how to setup it up for giving me a boot up menu for drive
selecton.


Jumpers: No Jumpers are presently used.
Western Digital manual Jumper info:

1. Default Configuration - no jumpers needed

2. SSC enabled - jumper pins 1 & 2 (spread spectrum clocking)

3. PM2 enabled - jumper pins 3 & 4 (contrled spinup)

4. OPT1 enabled -jumper pins 5 & 6 (150 MB/s data transfer speed enable)

Thanks for taking the time.

 

[John Barnes]

That is a function of your BIOS not the operating system. You need separate
licenses for each install.

 

[Paul Randall]

I 'd appreciate some help here. MS phone tech support recommened going to
a
forum for this. Computer and OS is fine, I just want to do something I
don't
know how to do yet.

Wanted:
Want to Add a 2nd bootable HD (same as 1st or master) as insurance against
HD failure. Upon Bootup, I want to be able to select which HD to use.
Both
HDs will have Vista on C: and XP on the partion D: I may delete D: later
because I only use Vista.

I have done this:
With 1st HD disconnected, I formatted & installed 2nd HD with XP, then
Vista
UpGrade, Norton, Office, Adobe, etc. Worked absolutely great!
Then I reconnected 1st HD to Sata 1 on motherbd, and 2nd HD to Sata 2 on
Motherbd. Boots up on 1st HD, everything works great but 2nd HD acts as
a
great backup drive but will not boot-up as it did when it was alone (there
is
no option to boot up to it). Windows Explorer shows 2nd HD as F: and
Partion
is G:

I am fairly confident nothing is wrong and it is doing what is expected.
I
need to know how to setup it up for giving me a boot up menu for drive
selecton.

Licensing is a problem if you are a stickler for being absolutely honest
about agreeing to MS's license agreements for its operating systems. The
words are pretty explicit and installing it on multiple partitions, even
though the OS in only one partition can be running at any time, probably
violates the agreement.

This info in this paragraph kind of explains the process but may not be
technically correct. The boot-up process and your BIOS determine the drive
letters of the partitions on your hard drives and the order in which your
hard drives are checked as to whether the system should try to boot from
them. Partitions can be hidden or not hidden. Hidden partitions are
ignored for boot-up purposes. Unhidden partitions can be active or not
active. All unhidden partitions will be assigned a drive letter. The first
active partition, as determined by the Bios, that can be booted will be.

If you have two identical hard drives, set up with the two partitions with
the two operating systems, I assume you would prefer to have a method to
have your choice of which hard drive appears and your choice of which OS
boots on that hard drive. Multibooting between WXP and Vista partitions on
one hard drive is easy and much discussed on this and other newsgroups.

In the past, I've used a system like this to 'switch' hard drives. This
system had a floppy drive. set to boot ahead of any other device, but any
removable boot device that boots before the hard drives would work just as
well. It requires booting twice. The floppy drive contained GDisk.exe
which is partitioning software that comes with Norton Ghost. On bootup, a
batch file used GDisk to display the current settings and had a menu to
allow changing settings. Changing the settings was done by executing GDisk
once or more times to hide partitions on the drive taken out of service and
unhiding/activating the partitions on the drive being put in service. Once
completed, I would remove the floppy and reboot, and the proper drive would
be booted.

This multiboot system worked well in my case but is not goofproof. I would
suggest you research various multiboot software packages, or at least get a
couple of cheap hard drives and experiment before you trust valuable
information to at the mercy of the system. For example, my system provided
no means to make a backup from one hard drive that could be loaded onto the
other hard drive.

-Paul Randall

 

[Richard Urban]

I did just this a few years ago, with Windows XP and Windows 2000, using a
third party boot manager. The boot manager allowed me to do a few things to
implement this setup:

1. It allowed me to hide the systems that were not being used from the
system that was booted. This prevented the spread of infection.

2. It allowed me to create boot accounts. This in turn allowed me to set
up one account for my children, who could boot into one operating system on
one hard drive, but not the others. It allowed me to create my personal
account that allowed me to boot into any of the four operating systems.

By doing this, no matter how my children screwed up their operating system
with malware, viruses etc, the other three operating systems remained
unscathed. If their system became unusable I just restored their system from
Drive Image and they were good again.

--


Regards,

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

 

[John Barnes]

Most newer BIOS's allow you to hit a pf key and select the drive to boot
from during POST. In spite of Richard using 4 unlicensed copies of his
operating system (s), you are still required to have a license for each
installation of the os on your machine. That is up to you. Also, each copy
will call into Microsoft frequently and when they sense a different serial
number on the install drive, you will probably be required to activate, then
when you change back you will have to reactivate the other one. Have fun.

 

[Richard Urban]

MVP - had licenses for everything.

Better know what you are talking about before you speak.

--


Regards,

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

 

[John Barnes]

Glad you did. Your wording made it sound as though you just made copies and
used them. Since you said you did what the OP did, that involved copying
with no indication of additional licensing. Generally a copy of the os will
not work well when left on the system with the original, and not hidden as
the OP proposes. When booted the new copy has a pointer conflict with the
drive entry point in the registry which either causes a conflict or causes
it to be reenumerated and then the new drive letter causes problems with
drive letters already stored in the registry.

 

[John Barnes]

Incidentally, I don't know what MVP has to do with licenses. It doesn't
grow them or give them to you and I hope you weren't using the MSDN licenses
for family use and not the 'testing' use that they provide for, and it
doesn't make you more honest, though you are as you said you had licenses.

 

[Richard Urban]

Testing various dual boot scenarios (using MSDN licenses) along with a valid
retail license for 2K and XP. I also installed Win98 and DOS as boot options
(also retail licenses.). Also had OS/2 in the mix.

Even though I have the MSDN licenses for Vista I am using a retail license
on my computer, along with dual booting into Windows XP - another retail
license.

Anyone can audit my PC's at any time and will find nothing amiss. That is
why I get so pi**ed when people "borrow" operating systems and other
software.

--


Regards,

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

 

[John Barnes]

Agree with you completely. On behalf of the OP to the various groups you
post to, let me thank you for your time and helpful posts