Just bought new hard drive - disk management question

[SteveH]

Hello

I am writing for a bit of advice.

I have just installed a hard drive in my PC tower. This is in addition to
the drive (C) I already have and which holds Windows XP Home.

I have bought this additional disk so that I can install Windows XP
Professional on it. The Professional CD I have is a special edition 120-day
version for me to prepare for a Windows exam.

When I double-click on My Computer I cannot see the new Hitachi disk, but I
can see my usual CD-ROM drive, C drive, etc.

I can, however, see my new disk in Device Manager, and I can see it in
Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management. In Computer
Management I can see disk 0 (my C drive) and disk 1 (my new Hitachi drive).

My C drive shows a healthy NTFS system, while my new drive is showing
Unallocated. If I right-click on 'Unallocated' I can see that I am to be
invited to create a new partition and then Primary partition.

I do not want to give Windows XP Professional any kind of prominence because
I will remove it after the 120-day trial expires and I want to be able to
choose when I load it. I don't want the PC to boot into Professional and then
for me to have to choose my Home edition, because all of my files and
programmes are on the latter.

Where do I go from here, please?

Many thanks for any advice.

Steve

 

[David B.]

Most modern systems have a keystroke you use during POST to select a
temporary boot device, Dell uses F12, Asus boards use F8. See if yours has
such an option, if so, I would do the following;
disconnect the original drive, install the new drive in it's permanent
location and install XP (creating the partition during the setup process),
then reconnect the original drive to its original location. This will allow
you to dual boot but using the above mentioned F key, but it will keep each
OS entirely on it's own disk, rather than setting up a dual boot option on
your original disk, this is my preferred method.

 

[SteveH]

Hello David B

Many thanks for your reply.

If I have understood you correctly, you would physically disconnect the
current C disk in the tower case and connect up my new drive (already done
the latter). Then put in the Win XP CD and install in to that disk. Then open
up the tower again and reconnect the cables to my old C drive disk?

It sounds logical as, yes, I don't want the two operating systems to be on
the one disk - that was the whole purpose in buying the new disk.

Normally, in a dual-boot system I think I would be asked to choose at
Start-Up, wouldn't I, which operating system I wanted, but you are suggesting
that I would press the F8 key (I think that's the key to get into Safe Mode),
isn't it?

Cheers

Steve

 

[David B.]

In a normal dual boot setup you are correct, you would get the menu to
select the OS, but that does not keep the 2 OS's entirely independent of one
another, if you install your second XP onto the second drive with the
original drive still installed, the second OS will not boot if the original
hard drive becomes unavailable. It will work either way, I just prefer to
keep my OS's completely independent.