Having A Separate Boot Drive?
Nov 30, 2011
have a 1TB drive partitioned into two 500GB partitions. One has everything on it, the other is a backup of the other partition (I know, a horrible idea, but I had no alternative). I now have a 60GB SSD that I want to use only as a boot drive, and store everything else that I possibly can on the 1TB hard drive.Here's my question: What is the best way to go about setting this up? Do I need to set up RAID? Also, will I be able to selectively restore the OS and anything else necessary onto the SSD from my backup partition?
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Aug 28, 2012
I have got two separate hard drives one running Windows 7 one running xp. I need to be able to chose which os to run but currently I can only do so by pressing F12. I have tried EasyBCD but it wont work - does anyone know how I can do this?
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Oct 16, 2009
I have Windows 7 RC1, and am trying to install XP on a separate drive but am getting the following error:
"Setup could not load the keyboard layout file KBDUS.DLL.
Setup cannot continue. Power down or reboot your computer now."
I restart and am able to go back to Windows 7...Any ideas on how to get around this??
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Dec 6, 2009
Is there an easy way to dual boot on separate drives, i have installed windows 7 on 1 drive & vista on another. This was done independenly on the same machine as to say put vista on last year the got another hard drive took the vista drive out put new hard drive in & installed windows 7.I connected both. they see each other.I have read lots about reinstall one OS but nothing on if its already installed. IS THERE AWAY?
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Nov 24, 2011
I just bought an SSD and want to install windows 7 on it and have all my other files on a separate non ssd drive. How would you get the OS to change the default directory from C: to another directory and make it that way when installing programs etc.
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Nov 3, 2009
I've done some searching for this and found some similar issues but nothing fits exactly what I'm trying to do. I have been running Vista Ult. 64 bit for a little over a year and have loved it. It solved all the problems I had with XP Pro 32 bit on my hardware. I bought 7 Pro 64 bit through www.theultimatesteal.com since I'm taking some night classes. I forgot I couldn't upgrade from Ult.
to Pro so I had to do a clean install, which I did, on a separate drive. I have five drives in my system, C, D, and E are all 1TB while F and G are 1.5TB. C is where Vista is installed and G is where 7 is located. I'll be going back and forth between the OS's until I get everything the way I want it.
At that point I want to remove Vista and have 7 be the only OS. But I do not want to migrate the install onto the 1TB C: drive, I want to keep it on the 1.5TB drive but have it recognized as the C: drive. The install was done from within Vista from the download since my physical media has not yet arrived. So even when I boot into 7, it is seen as being installed on the G: drive; it did not make itself the C: drive.
So I'll need to get rid of Vista, get 7 to see itself as being the C: drive, get rid of the boot menu, and swap the drives and cables around to put my 7 install at the head of the HDD pack. I've already done a full system backup of my Vista install with Acronis TIH 2010. How do I need to go about this? On another note; why did MS only offer home and pro through ultimate steal? They offered Vista Ultimate. I mean, it is called ULTIMATE steal, not Pro steal afterall, and it would have made the upgrade process that much easier.
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Mar 4, 2012
I currently have Windows 7 installed on two separate drives in my box. I can only set (select) boot sequence in the BIOS. If I recall correctly, way back when a boot selection menu would appear when I think I was running Windows 7 (when it first came out) alongside XP but that screen no longer appears with my current setup. Is there a way to get that screen back, or an alternate way to select the OS of choice without the hassle?
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Jun 26, 2012
I downloaded EasyBCD 2.1.2, used it to recognize EVERY boot record, deleted the MBR on the old HDD, and rebooted.Now, the system boots straight to the new HDD without prompt from bootloader (which is good) but still requires the presence of the old HDD (I disconnected it, alas...)In the end: I called and told the customer that "I'd be happy to GHOST all her data and slap a fresh Windows 7 install on the new HDD (with a fresh/whole MBR) and then drop all her data back onto it. However, this would require more time; the other option being that she accepts the machine for what it is, perfectly functional minus the dependency on the old HDD."have considered this option, but I found ZERO indication of the old HDD failing, other than "BAD" written on the drive with Sharpie. The customer was happy yesterday and accepted the current state (she didn't want to invest more time/money into it) but today when she picks it up she isn't happy because she was told four months ago that the drive was bad and now I'm saying I don't see an indication of it. Other than pulling the data, installing fresh OS, then dropping data back on; or not installing OS with two drives present in the first place?
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Sep 22, 2012
I have read that using a computer specifically for financial transactions with known and trusted entities (such as a bank) is a good way to reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of your accounts being hacked by reducing the likelihood of inadvertently installing a malware, spyware, or virus by reducing internet sites visited. Assuming this is correct, I was wondering about dual booting one computer with two physical hard drives (each with its own OS) versus one hard drive with two partitions. I figure the former would be "more secure" since one drive would be isolated from any unwanted programs. However, since they shared a few things (motherboard and such), is this set up as "secure" as having two computers? If so, how does one go about setting up a dual boot with two separate hard drives of the same operating system using one computer?
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Mar 3, 2011
I have separate ide drives one is installed with XP Pro and the other with windows 7. I want to have the choice of either os when the pc boots i.e. choose the drive to boot the pc.
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Aug 4, 2012
I want to combine my 2 desktops into one, since I never use both together and the older one is very dated by now (think Time/tiny computers old). My current machine is an Asus P5Q-E with a C2D and has one HDD on a SATA connection running windows 7 64bit. The old computer is a single core Athlon 2700+ thing with a pair of hard drives on a single IDE ribbon.What I want to do is put the hard drives from the old machine into the newer and be able to choose between Windows XP already installed on the old master IDE hard drive and Windows 7 on the newer SATA drive (I've only kept the old computer to run XP for compatibility), all the while keeping the old slave IDE drive as a slave.
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Dec 13, 2010
I have Window XP installed on Drive C:. My son installed Windows 7 on Drive E:. However, when the computer is booted up, it boots up in Windows 7, without allowing a choice. I suspect this can be corrected in BIOS, but don't want to screw it up.
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Nov 26, 2009
I want to install 7 on a separate hard drive to see how it works & work indepenantly on it's own system. How can I if at all make it so when I am booting up I can toggle in between 7 & xp startups.
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Mar 5, 2011
Currently running Win7(64-bit) in RAID-0 on 2 WD Caviar Black's.I just purchased a SSD drive.What I want to do is load Win7 on the SSD and use that as my main drive, while also keeping my RAID drives boot-able and in tact as they are now. (Thus, a dual-boot Win7 setup)Will the BIOS allow me to select which drive to boot from upon start-up? My mobo is an ASUS Rampage II Extreme.
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Dec 1, 2009
i have xp home 32 bit as my OS now and i have another hard drive installed and ready to install win 7 64 bit on to. can i do this with xp running or should i disconnect the HD with xp on it, then when i start the computer it won't see any OS and then i could boot from the win7 dvd and do a clean installl and then re=connect the HD with xp on it.
then when i start computer i should get the choice of which one to boot from or is this not the way to do it?? i want the OS's on separate HD's for now as i am sure that not everything that i want to run will work on the 64 bit win7 until i can afford to get all the programs i use to work on win7.
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Aug 5, 2012
I was just recently moving some of my files from My C drive to E. It was all going smoothly as I had done it before but, this time instead of copy and pasting I dragged and dropped the files over. I was doing this to cut down space on my C drive, to my surprise though I saw it was increasing (drive C) by every file I had put on E. I would like to know if I had done something wrong or what happened I started at 148GBs stored and it increased to 156GBs. If it helps I was moving games from my x86 program files.
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Nov 7, 2012
I have a Verbatim 931 GB external drive that I use to make backups on my laptop using Acronis TIH 2012. I also have another laptop with Windows 7 on it that I was wondering if somehow or someway use the one external hard drive to make image backups that I will be able to restore if something goes wrong. I gues I would have to split the 931GB into 2 seperate partitions or drives or something. This is what I'm asking. Is it possible to use this one big external drive to make backups on 2 seperate computers?
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Aug 16, 2009
I have 2 identical drives in my computer. Prior to Windows 7, I had Vista 32 Ultimate installed on drive 1. Drive 2 was used a backup drive.
I have now installed Windows 7 64 on drive 2. To make absolutely sure I didnt screw up my vista installation I removed drive 1 with vista on it from my pc.
I got Windows 7 up and running with no problems on drive 2 by doing a clean install by reformatting the entire drive, then reconnected drive 1 with Vista 32 installed. I can easily control which one I boot up by changing boot order in CMOS. This was done instead of having multiple boot partitions on a single driver for a few different reasons.
With both drives in and booted up under Windows 7 64, I am trying to access the data files on Vista 32. Unfortunately I dont have a drive letter for the vista 32 drive. I went into disk management to give it a drive letter, but I get an error message when I select drive letter. See attached image.
I tried refreshing and trying again but keep getting same error.
Is it possible to access the Data on the other drive under a NTFS partition? I did set the folders I wanted to access as viewable by everyone. the problem is I cant get a drive letter to the disk.
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Sep 23, 2009
When the final version of Windows 7 is released I am going to install the Windows 7 operating system to my C drive and put my data on a separate physical D drive. I am going to put the temporary Internet files and the Windows temporary files folders on that D drive. What user folders would anyone suggests go to the D drive and what other data and/or folders would anyone suggest to go on the D drive?
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Jan 6, 2010
I currently have windows 7 ultimate in a Dell Gx270 P4 2.6ghz I know its old. And i want to Install Windows XP in another hard drive i have, but how do i make both hard drives boot, so i can select which one i want to boot.
I'm doing this because XP mode doesn't work in this computer. And i don't want to partition.
Most information i find in google requires partitioning and i don't want that.
If you know how please post it, or post the Links where i can find it.
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Jul 30, 2009
I'm in IT (surprise surprise) and I have extra hard drives coming out my ears. I want to move my Win RC x64 install to a larger hard drive.
Whats the easiest way to do this? I know its possible, I used to ghost XP machines at the local highschool (dont fret, they were all licensed).
I'm toying with the concept of making a fresh install, and doing something to the effect of a system restore to it, or something like that.
On a slightly less related note, my system is more powerful a machine than i ever expected to own two years ago. Its a core i7 machine with 12gb of ram and Windows 7 installed on a raptor. Why doesn't a fresh install of Windows 7 simply fly? Sure, multitasking can be done almost infinitely (lol), but there's literally no speed increase in app startup times, opening "my computer" or the device manager. None of it works as quickly or smoothly as i would have thought.
Also, again, where can i find a simple list of changes between RC and RTM?
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Apr 13, 2011
I dual boot with Windows 7 on a physically separate hard drive, as well as XP, will XP still override my Windows 7 bootloader since it tends to get jealous?
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Sep 4, 2011
If you have a small but fast (or maybe not so fast) drive that you would like to ONLY run Windows off of and a larger separate HDD that you want to use as the install drive for all programs.In my case I have a 50GB SSD and a RAID0 array of 2TB. With space being limited on the SSD the best option for me is to install everything to the RAID array and leave the OS on the SSD. Mind you, you don't have to be running a RAID array to do this. That's just how my system is set up. You'll probably be better off just using a larger single HDD for stability reasons.And if you are doing a fresh install you should give this tutorial a look: User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation So the first step is to open REGEDIT. Simply click the Start Menu, type REGEDIT in the search bar and hit ENTER.Next look for the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" Once opened go to "SOFTWARE". There are two folder in this directory we will be editing. Note that the second folder "WOW64" is only for 64-bit users. If you are running 32-bit then the "WINDOWS" folder is all you will need to make changes to.Now from the "WINDOWS" folder you want to select "CURRENTVERSION". Simply click the folder itself not the arrow next to it. This is what you should see in the main window to the right of the directories. Now my registry settings have already been changed. Note that my secondary drive is "D:". Originaly everything here was set to "C:".
Once this is finished the 32-bit users are finished and can restart their systems. 64-bit users have one more step. Now you want to go to your "WOW64" folder. While I just realized I forgot to cut a snippet for this step it's fairly simple. Once in the "WOW64" folder you once again want to click the "CURRENTUSER" folder and observe the main window to the right.Just like in the "WINDOWS" registry you will make the same changes. Once you have implemented your drive your registry should look like this.Now restart your system. Though there is a chance you are completely finished I highly suggest running a command prompt session and typing "sfc /scannow". This will allow your system to scan for any conflicts in the internal settings and fix them.
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Jun 6, 2011
Have upgraded to win 7 home from vista on a laptop. I copied the old vista installation to an external hard drive, with a linux pen drive so was wonder if there was a way to do a transfer from the external hard drive to the new windows install
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Oct 17, 2012
My computer has windows 7. I created a separate partition on my hard drive to install windows xp, but now when I try to install it I get an chkdsk /f error.
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Mar 12, 2012
I would like to remove Vista from my dual boot setup. Here is how I got to where I am now.
I had Vista installed on my PC hard drive (was C. Later, I decided to install Windows 7 HP on a new and seperate HDD. I unplugged the Vista HDD and added the new HDD and installed Windows 7 as if from scratch (I was worried that the install would mess up all my files on Vista). After the Windows 7 was up and running, I then reconnected Vista redesignated it as drive E: and after some searching on how to, I created the dual boot using my Windows 7 disk so I'm assuming the boot file in on drive C: along with Windows 7.
I now want delete the dual boot and Vista so I can use the drive as a backup drive or possibly Win8. I have found several methods to do this but none that really have my specific situation.
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May 22, 2012
install on my PC desktop a Dual Boot two separate HDD's Windows 7 32Bit on IDE drive & Snow Leopard OSX on SATA drive
My Pc ASUS P5PL2-E
Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz
2MB DDR2 NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
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Apr 27, 2011
I need some direction (or reassurance) about setting up a new Win 7 system using an older Win 7 user folder.I had Win 7 Ultimate on an HP with the user folders on a separate internal drive. The HP died; the drive with the user folders is intact.his user folder has almost 400 GB of data that we need to keep as is. (My wife's a video producer with several projects in work.)I bought a new Lenovo with Win 7 Home Premium. I set up user accounts (on the system drive) and then added the drive with the HP user accounts. I made the necessary registry changes to access the added drive for user folders. Upon booting, I checked the properties of my user folder on the drive I added and it reported 0 bytes!! I didn't want to risk losing that data so I shut it down. My original user folder still has everything I want and need.
I know the user folder has data for my applications. Is there data in the user folder specific for the computer I'm on? If so, what do I merge from the Lenovo user folder with my big user folder? If not, was the "0 byte report" a fluke?Also, would I be better off installing all my applications before incorporating this big user folder? I have not yet installed the Adobe software that will be using most of the data in the user folder.
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Feb 24, 2012
I would like to know, if creating another partition, dedicated to media, would increase performance, and screen capture speed, like a separate hard disk would. I don't think it would because its still running on the same sata cable, meaning the transfer speed cant be dispersed, but I figured id ask to be sure. If I would get even a slight boost from this than I will defrag, and shrink my partition and add another for media.
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Apr 9, 2012
I have a Gigabyte 880GM-D2H motherboard. I am trying to install Windows 7 on a separate SSD drive(OCZ-Vertex3) but Windows does not see this drive, but it is listed in my BIOS..
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Oct 31, 2010
I have a system drive on a workstation which is 1) removable, 2) contains 2 partitions - one for the sytem & data files, one reserved by the os.
I would like to use this drive and it's file data in an external drive case (SATA) connected to my notebook.
Will the notebook handle the external drive properly?
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