OT: Want a new hard drive...

narf poit chez BOOM · #1 April 24th, 2007, 08:39 PM

...Supposing someone wanted to upgrade to XP Pro, install it on a, say, 500GB HD and then copy over stuff from an XP Home install HD (So savegames and important data, like my RPGs don't get lost),

Would booting with two HDs with an OS in each cause problems and, if so, how do I get around them?

Baron Munchausen · #2 April 24th, 2007, 09:18 PM

I have heard this will create a disaster, but don't know the details. XP is apparently rather odd in the way it uses disks and partitions. The booting OS would probably rewrite a bunch of control files in the other partition and make it unbootable. But it might be even worse than that and trash both copies of the OS.

Phoenix-D · #3 April 24th, 2007, 09:20 PM

It doesn't cause a problem. I've done it many times when a computer died so I could make emergency backups before doing repairs.

narf poit chez BOOM · #4 April 24th, 2007, 09:20 PM

Do you have to set jumpers or something?

Phoenix-D · #5 April 24th, 2007, 10:00 PM

You might, but IIRC only if the drives are attached using the same cable.

AngleWyrm · #6 April 24th, 2007, 10:48 PM

I installed XP Pro (sp2) on a second logical partition (D

of my only physical drive. When it booted, it would pause during the DOS boot sequence and give a choice of which operating system to boot into. Did that so that I could copy my important stuff over to D:, then format C:.

Later, I found a better way: I put the My Documents folder on d: drive. Might try to move the 'Documents and Settings' tree over to D: next time I format.

Fyron · #7 April 24th, 2007, 11:32 PM

Quote:

Baron Munchausen said:
I have heard this will create a disaster...

Fortunately, reality is much different from what you have heard. This isn't windows 98 we are talking about, here. Sure winnt's boot loader is no Grub, but it works fairly well when you stick within the realm of Windows OSes...

Narf:
An OS installation on a second HDD (or partition) is just treated as normal files when you are booted into a different OS. Install time is a little different; if you leave the drive in the compie when you install XP Pro, it will detect the second OS installation and create two entries in the boot loader, one for the old and one for the new. You will then be able to choose which of the OSes to boot into.

Assuming you plan to delete XP Home once you have XP Pro up and running (a sage course of action), I'd recommend that you take out the second HDD, install XP Pro on the new HDD, then reconnect the old HDD to copy data. This way, the 500 GB drive will be treated as the master drive/partition and the boot loader will be placed on it for your XP Pro installation. It will also save you hassles later when you go to delete the XP Home installation to reuse the disk (namely, you won't have a useless entry in your boot loader).

Also, I'd recommend that you create two partitions; one at 10 GB and one using the remaining space. The 10 GB partition will be just for windows. Data and programs would then go on the other partition. This makes it easier to reformat and reinstall windows in the future, should the need arise. You can remap My Documents type folders with TweakUI (part of XP Power Toys) if it is too much hassle to not use them.

PvK · #8 April 24th, 2007, 11:34 PM

Different hard drives have different jumper settings available. The usual ones are Master, Slave, and Cable Select. The BIOS on your mother board decides based on the cable position and what the drive tells it (determined by jumper settings on the drive) which drive is the Master, and uses that drive's boot area to determine where the OS(es) it will use is(are).

In general, you should be able to set up an OS on a new drive, and then put in an old drive from an old system, setting that drive in position and/or jumpers to make it the slave, and you'll get what you want.

However, since XP has evil "authentication" software designed to give M$ an excuse to invalidate your license and make you buy Windohs again (see, it doesn't abuse its monopoly position enough to get enough sales, because its goal is as much profit as possible, so nothing is ever enough), and one excuse it uses is thinking that you may be trying to install Windohs on a new computer. Since it was installed on a computer with one hard drive, and now there's another hard drive, it may "determine" that you need to do annoying things to prove you have the right to run Windohs XP...

Personally, I'd upgrade to Win2K Pro instead of XP Pro. No evil authentication, less annoying crud, less bloat.

PvK · #9 April 24th, 2007, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:

Quote:

Baron Munchausen said:
I have heard this will create a disaster...

Fortunately, reality is much different from what you have heard. This isn't windows 98 we are talking about, here.

Is there a known issue with Win98? I've done that kind of HD manuever several times on Win98 and seen no problems.

Fyron · #10 April 24th, 2007, 11:40 PM

Windows 98 doesn't have a boot loader in the sense of the nt loader, lilo, grub, etc. It takes over as the only bootable option once you install it onto a drive. That's all I meant by it, in reference to BM's misinformation about XP destroying both (Windows) OSes when you do a multi-boot installation. You can certainly juggle hdds for different 98 installs, but XP doesn't destroy other Windows OSes, typically.