Dual Boot Sweet Tip

[Uncle John]

For those interested in dual booting from different or twin identical OS I
have happened on the following neat way of doing it:

1 Two disks master and slave, about same size. In my case SATA 74 GB
Westinghouse Raptor

2 Windows XP Pro installed with all apps on Master=Disk 0
3 In Windows use CasperXP to diskcopy Disk 1 to Disk 2 (Windows 1 = Bios 0)
4 Reboot, set the bios with Slave=Disk 0 as first had disk boot priority,
set Boot from CD as the first general boot device
5a Leave the Windows CD in the Optical Drive and reboot take care not to
touch a key while rebooting or the CD will be fired up, the PC will boot
into the master Disk
5b Take the CD out and Reboot. The PC will boot into the slave disk
6 The slave disk in my case for backup is updated nightly by Casper XP
scheduled copy (System Restore has to be disabled on the slave to be able to
diskcopy properly.

The behaviour of being able to select which hard disk will may be specific
to my Gigabyte motherboard and Award bios, but the system will work, ;less
sweetly simply but switching the hard disk boot priority in the bios before
booting

Ainsi dit. ansi soit!-
Uncle John

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

For those interested in dual booting from different or twin identical OS I
have happened on the following neat way of doing it:

1 Two disks master and slave, about same size. In my case SATA 74 GB
Westinghouse Raptor

2 Windows XP Pro installed with all apps on Master=Disk 0
3 In Windows use CasperXP to diskcopy Disk 1 to Disk 2 (Windows 1 = Bios 0)
4 Reboot, set the bios with Slave=Disk 0 as first had disk boot priority,
set Boot from CD as the first general boot device
5a Leave the Windows CD in the Optical Drive and reboot take care not to
touch a key while rebooting or the CD will be fired up, the PC will boot
into the master Disk
5b Take the CD out and Reboot. The PC will boot into the slave disk
6 The slave disk in my case for backup is updated nightly by Casper XP
scheduled copy (System Restore has to be disabled on the slave to be able to
diskcopy properly.

The behaviour of being able to select which hard disk will may be specific
to my Gigabyte motherboard and Award bios, but the system will work, ;less
sweetly simply but switching the hard disk boot priority in the bios before
booting

Ainsi dit. ansi soit!-
Uncle John

Why should I go to the trouble of modifying the BIOS each time I
wish to boot to my other OS if I can have an OS selector in a boot
menu provided by a boot loader, e.g. XOSL (which, incidentally,
is free)? Seems to be a step backwards.

 

[Guest]

install xp onn first HDD. then install on seciond hard drive. window creates
dual boot menu.
pretty easy.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

For those interested in dual booting from different or twin identical OS I
have happened on the following neat way of doing it:

1 Two disks master and slave, about same size. In my case SATA 74 GB
Westinghouse Raptor

2 Windows XP Pro installed with all apps on Master=Disk 0
3 In Windows use CasperXP to diskcopy Disk 1 to Disk 2 (Windows 1 = Bios 0)
4 Reboot, set the bios with Slave=Disk 0 as first had disk boot priority,
set Boot from CD as the first general boot device
5a Leave the Windows CD in the Optical Drive and reboot take care not to
touch a key while rebooting or the CD will be fired up, the PC will boot
into the master Disk
5b Take the CD out and Reboot. The PC will boot into the slave disk
6 The slave disk in my case for backup is updated nightly by Casper XP
scheduled copy (System Restore has to be disabled on the slave to be able to
diskcopy properly.

The behaviour of being able to select which hard disk will may be specific
to my Gigabyte motherboard and Award bios, but the system will work, ;less
sweetly simply but switching the hard disk boot priority in the bios before
booting

Ainsi dit. ansi soit!-
Uncle John

Using Windows XP's built-in multi-boot manager would be easier.
The only thing you have to do is see that another entry is added in
the C:\boot.ini file. That can be done automatically when the 2nd
OS is installed, via one of the tabs in msconfig, or manually using
Notepad. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base for the syntax of
boot.ini . The advantage of using the boot manager to multi-boot
is that you can put multiple copies of the OS on a hard drive and
be able to select which one gets loaded. With the method of
adjusting the BIOS's HD boot order, you can only select which
HD does the booting.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

Would the process below be a good idea if I modified it and put 2 IDENTICAL
OS's on separate HD's in case one of the hard drives crashes? Along those
lines, I just bought a Dell computer without a floppy drive. Am I in
trouble? I only hear talk about creating an ASR (if I am remembering the
acronym correctly) disk on floppy to restore the system. I can't think of
too many other reasons to have a floppy drive these days. I will have a SONY
USB2.0 External DVD/CD burner. I think I want to make a disk image and if
the computer gets out of whack, wipe the disk clean and reload the image. Is
there a good primer on how to set up XP on a computer and be smart about it
from the start? I was thinking of partitioning the 2nd HD (300GB) and
copying the image of the 1st HD (the one with all the programs and OS) there.
Sorry if I have gotten way off topic.

 

[Jim]

For those interested in dual booting from different or twin identical OS I
have happened on the following neat way of doing it:

1 Two disks master and slave, about same size. In my case SATA 74 GB
Westinghouse Raptor

2 Windows XP Pro installed with all apps on Master=Disk 0
3 In Windows use CasperXP to diskcopy Disk 1 to Disk 2 (Windows 1 = Bios 0)
4 Reboot, set the bios with Slave=Disk 0 as first had disk boot priority,
set Boot from CD as the first general boot device
5a Leave the Windows CD in the Optical Drive and reboot take care not to
touch a key while rebooting or the CD will be fired up, the PC will boot
into the master Disk
5b Take the CD out and Reboot. The PC will boot into the slave disk
6 The slave disk in my case for backup is updated nightly by Casper XP
scheduled copy (System Restore has to be disabled on the slave to be able to
diskcopy properly.

The behaviour of being able to select which hard disk will may be specific
to my Gigabyte motherboard and Award bios, but the system will work, ;less
sweetly simply but switching the hard disk boot priority in the bios before
booting

Why do I have this feeling that someday, somewhere, somehow you're gonna
mess this up

Seems just a little too "Rube Goldberg" for me. But hey, if it works for
ya, so be it. It does sound like it may be specific to your mobo, maybe
even BIOS firmware version.

Personally, I bought Bootit NG 5-6 year ago for $30, have received every
upgrade since then for NOTHING. I can boot across HDs, partition, hide
them, and setup as many complex configurations I like, with a lot less
effort. Plus manage partitions and backup/restore image copies without
having to resort to additional software.

But again, whatever works and satisfies YOU is all that counts.

Jim

 

[Uncle John]

Yes that is the way I do it.

Some posters have missed the fact the dual boot installed but windows
depends on writing a special boot.in to ONE disk. if that disk fails the
second boot may also fail. Moreover live backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot
be done because both the disks will be in service

 

[Uncle John]

The dual boot installed but windows depends on writing a special boot.ini to
ONE disk. if that disk fails the second boot may also fail. Moreover live
backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both the disks will be
in service

 

[Uncle John]

The dual boot installed but windows depends on writing a special boot.ini to
ONE disk. if that disk fails the second boot may also fail. Moreover live
backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both the disks will be
in service

 

[Uncle John]

The dual boot installed but windows depends on writing a special boot.ini to
ONE disk. if that disk fails the second boot may also fail. Moreover live
backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both the disks will be
in service

 

[Uncle John]

Jim

The dual boot installed NG5-6 depends on writing a special boot sector to
ONE disk or a removable disk. If that disk fails the second disk boot also
fail. Moreover live backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both
the disks will be seen as in being in service. Before using the system
described I used NG. My arrangement is for backup purposes and it has the
advantage that I have an updated full backup disk always immediately
available. I have been using it for over a year with out problems

The bios switch using the bootable CD in or out of the optical boot drive is
just trimming, I agree.

No additional software needs to be purchased if you do not want the backup
disk to be updated on a daily schedule. The advantage of CasperXP is that
if the system does crash and you cannot repair Windows you can boot into the
backup disk and copy from it to the system disk or a new disk if necessary,
which I have done in practice. I do not claim my system is ideal and I only
put it forward as a tip for those interested.

Uncle John