Plugging hard drives with Vista

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sirius
  • Start date Start date
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Sirius

Hello,

I installed a second HD in my pc to play it safe. I unplugged the one with
XP and my programs on it and installed Vista on the second one. How can I
turn this "mess" into a dual boot system so I don't have to keep opening my
pc and plugging hard drives? Should I get a second IDE cable for
master/master or just do a master/slave situation?

And if I decide that I like Vista and want to get rid of XP and go back to a
single boot, how would I do it?

After that I am not sure what will I do. I might build a 64pc
with SATA or maybe just upgrade the MOBO/CPU in this one but then I still
would be tempted to get SATA.

Thank you.
 
Hello,

I installed a second HD in my pc to play it safe. I unplugged the one with
XP and my programs on it and installed Vista on the second one. How can I
turn this "mess" into a dual boot system so I don't have to keep opening my
pc and plugging hard drives? Should I get a second IDE cable for
master/master or just do a master/slave situation?
Click to expand...

If you installed XP to the first HDD and Vista to the second HDD then Vista
should have set up a dual boot for you. It did for me when I did it the
same way you describe.
 
Until someone thinks of a better idea you can toggle the drives in the
BIOS. You are now the boot manager. I don't think you should change
the installations, I think that they are best completely independent.

John
 
I don't think I have a dual boot system, the Win XP HD was unplugged ( both
power and data) when Vista was installed.
So it did not see it at all. What would happen if I plug them in both I
wonder.
 
The thing is, I have the HDs on the RAID controllers that I use as simple
EIDE controllers. The BIOS does not seem to differentiate between drives on
the RAID as boot devices.
 
Sorry for the delay, I lost track of your post in the multitude of posts
on this group. Some of the newer RAID/IDE controllers can interact with
the BIOS and add entries there. In addition to the usual Boot Sequence
in the BIOS, also look for something like a "Hard Disk Drive Sequence"
item. In that entry you can move the drives on the card controller up
and down the list. Other than that you would need to use a third party
boot manager but those usually need a FAT or FAT32 partition to install
on. Maybe the newer ones can share an NTFS partition but I don't know
of them.

John
 
Well, I managed to get one drive on the RAID and one on
the EIDE port. So now I just turn the Mobo controllers on and off in the
CMOS. That's not too painful.

Thank you for trying to help.
 
You're welcome.

John
Well, I managed to get one drive on the RAID and one on
the EIDE port. So now I just turn the Mobo controllers on and off in the
CMOS. That's not too painful.

Thank you for trying to help.
Click to expand...
 
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