Using Two Hard Drives Operating System Installation
Jun 14, 2012
I have two hard drives, one is SATA 500gb and the other is IDE 150gb. I had Windows 7 on the SATA and an old Ubuntu on the IDE hard drive. I hardly ever used Ubuntu and got tired of GRUB coming up every time I booted asking which OS I want so I decided to uninstall it. I wanted to go ahead and reformat the drive so I used an old Windows XP cd I have to reformat the 150g IDE drive. It wouldn't let me just reformat without installing XP so I went ahead and did that.So now whenever I turn on the PC it automatically boots into Windows XP. In XP I can see both drives, my 500gb with all my files and Windows 7 and the 150gb with just XP on it. In my BIOS the SATA 500gb is set as the main hdd, and is set as #1 in the boot priority (IDE hdd is not anywhere in boot priority). When I bring up the boot list and choose the SATA HDD it just brings up a BIOS flasher, no Windows 7.
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Nov 1, 2012
I am running windows 7 pro 64 bit on a WD 500 gig Sata Hard Drive, The other day I pulled the sata cable from the 500 gig sata and installed a samsung 250 gig SSD and loaded win 8 pro. The install went great. The problem is when I connect the sata cable back to the 500 gig HD to boot to win 7 I have to hook to a different slot on the motherboard to get it to boot. If I want to boot to the win 8 hard drive I have to do the same. If there a easier way to use two hard drives with two different OS in one computer so I can boot to either one. I dont want to dual boot on same drive.
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Oct 24, 2009
I did a clean install of Windows 7 Home premium on a new hard drive. Previously, I had 2 hard drives and ran a dual boot, one XP and the other Vista. After Win 7 install, my machine originally gave me the option to boot into ony one of the three. After a few re-boots, it started skipping the splash screen and would automaitlcally got to Win 7 (I have no issues with this).
Now that I like Win 7 and everything is running fine, I want to format my other two drives. Problem is that my system won't let me format the drive with Vista on it as it seems to be using some system files or something. I've tried it from my computer, disc management and command prompt with no luck.
I removed the boot sequence from msconfig so only Win 7 is there and I used EasyBCD as another way of trying. Still can't format the Vista drive. All I want is my computer running Win 7 only and use my older drives as backup drives.
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Feb 3, 2012
I am trying to upgrade the hard drive which has my operating system on itI disconnect all drives except the one which has the operating system and the new drive which will replace the old one.I use Norton ghost to copy from the old to the new but when i connect the new drive only it does not boot into windows.I beleive i have to make the partition of the new drive as active but at what stage do i have to do this?
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Oct 22, 2011
I have a licensed windows 7 home basic os installed on my pc. Can I install it as many times as I want on the same machine i.e. after formatting the machine, can I install and activate it more than once?
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Jun 1, 2011
I am installing windows 7. but the installation cd won't recognized the hard drives but my bios does. i went to the website and looked up drivers for the wd2500s but they don't have them. they said that they use the software in windows to work. so is there any way to get the drives to work? i have three set up on raid 0
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Oct 11, 2011
I'm an IT proffesional, currently going learning for my Configuring Windows 7.I used windows 7 since the first beta came out, and I must say, I never was dissapointed by it.But because I am learning I am trying to get all the computers here running windows 7, and I have a computer in my office wich I am trying to install it on.There are a few problems thoug:The computer only has a CDrom player, and cannot boot from a usb device.When I first got it, windows XP was installed, and it only had 750 mb of memory. Stupid as I was, I decided to give it a try anyway installing windows 7 from inside Windows XP using an external DVD player connected with USB.This failed, and gave me lots of error so I tried the next step.
As It cannot find a network share I had to instal windows PE on a CDrom and from there I could acces my extrernal HDD where I had a clean copy of windows 7 on as INSTALL.wim. I cleaned everything, and created everything from scratch with succes. Image X worked, and BCDboot worked. So it seemed to go great.After restarting my system, it still will only give me, Missing operating system.I tried to search on the internet but couldn't really find something related to my problem.In the bios it says I can start from IDE CD-rom device, Diskette drive, Hard-Disk Drive c:, Integrated NIC (Disabled)I bought some different memory and I am now at 1.5 mb DDRIt is an Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.4 Ghz Level Cachge 512 Integrated.It's a DELL Optiplex Gx260 Series.
The boot menu gives me:. Normal2. Hard-Disk Drive C: (Wich I used for my 100mb) (And I used D for my big partition and with BCDboot I used D:WindowsSystem32cdboot d:windows /s D: ) Wich worked because he did copy the files.
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Feb 20, 2012
Set up did not find any hard disk drives during installation?
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Dec 26, 2011
I have a system with three hard disks on them. The Primary one has the OS and some programs. Secondary one has programs and data (like pictures and such). Third one has data and backup data.I recently formatted the Primary drive which had Windows Vista on it, and did a full install of Windows 7 Pro.After the install, the Secondary and Tertiary disks showed up in disk management; I just had to assign drive letters to them.The issue: I can see the existing Secondary and Tertiary disks in windows explorer. I can go into properties on each hard disk and see that there is used disk space on them (so the data is still there). But Windows Explorer shows both hard disks as empty. I can't actually see any of the data. What can I do to fix this...obviously without formatting the disks and losing the existing data on there? Is this perhaps a driver issue?
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Dec 8, 2009
I currently have windows vista 32 bit on my hard drive. I want to upgrade to windows 7 ultimate, but don't want to format this HD just yet.
Is there a way to load windows 7 onto this hard drive then have that portion of the HD boot up in windows 7? That way I can run windows 7 and still have my windows vista and all my files on the same hard drive.
If windows 7 works out, can I delete that windows vista portion and copy the files into the Windows 7 portion?
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May 6, 2012
Firstly I should say that I am primarily a mac user, and it is not my laptop I am posting about. Although I am reasonably knowledgable about Windows, I haven't used it since XP, about four years ago, and so am pretty rusty.Basically, my girlfriends computer randomly turned off about a week ago, she assumed it was a dead battery, plugged it in, and then when it turned back on it wouldn't boot displaying error message: missing operating system.As it is a Dell laptop it didn't come with any installation discs, and I totally forgot to even make a repair disc when we got the laptop. I managed to get hold of a Windows 7 Installation Disc and license key for Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit through my university. I think the laptop was previously running Windows 7 Home Premium, but that's all I know, and I'm not entirely sure of that fact.
Anyway, burnt the .iso to disc and have tried to boot several times from DVD Drive. The laptop loads the files from the DVD fine, and gets as far as the "Starting Windows" screen, where it seems to get stuck for a few minutes, until it becomes a black screen with just a cursor (the cursor still moves). This also happens with an 64 bit repair DVD I also managed to get hold of.
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Sep 25, 2011
I want to download the original operating system installation disk from the factory for future purposes
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Jan 26, 2012
I came into the possession of a new HP computer, the hard drive has no operating system on it. Is there any way of putting windows XP or Vista on this system without going out and buying them. Are there any operating systems online that can be downloaded?
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Aug 5, 2012
My hard drive is slowing down the preformace of my computer. The hard drive gets a 5.9 rating in windows 7 performance ratings. I would like to switch out to a newer hard drive possibly Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX. I do have an external backup drive
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May 2, 2012
I am not very good with computers, so I don't really know how to do this, and need explanation in simple english. My hard drive is constantly causing BSODs on my HP laptop (Windows 7) and I have ordered a new hard drive. I am not quite sure how to transfer the operating system.
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Nov 23, 2011
i cant install operating system on hard drive because hard drive is change to dynamic suggest tome to change dynamic into logical
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Jan 6, 2013
I want to install a new hard drive on my laptop. How can I keep the windows 7 operating system that is now installed on the current hard drive?
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Jan 12, 2013
when you turn it on it flashes the vaio logo then goes to a black screen that says "operating system not found". i googled the problem and my instincts were correct it was a damaged hard drive there is even a Internet video as the first link when you google it and it shows his laptop go figure.
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Jun 15, 2011
So yesterday I was online and uploaded a pic to Twitpic. Everything froze up so after a bit I decided to restart. When it restarted it went right into system repair. I let that run ALL NIGHT LONG. In the morning, it asked if I wanted to do a system restore and I said yes. But it said I had no restore points. I knew that wasn't right so I ran through the memory check option and then the hard drive check and was told memory was fine but now I don't have a hard drive found or an operating system. Any clue what has happened or how to restore everything?
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Nov 13, 2011
I have a hard drive I recovered from my old Dell laptop when the motherboard gave out. Originally, I just put it in an external hard case and have been using it as external storage. Now it is getting filled up, so I would like to reformat it to remove the OS partition (Vista) to give me access to the entire drive. I have removed and baked up all my files, but cannot find a way to repartition the drive to remove the OS volume. Disk manager will not let me access that volume to delete it - nor will diskpart. In fact, only the non-OS volume even shows up with a drive letter in diskpart.
I have searched the web but have only been able to find info on how to reformat the main hard drive...and this is definitely NOT what I want to do.
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Jul 5, 2010
is there an easy way to reboot into a different operating system thats on a different harddrive from the desktop?
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Nov 22, 2010
I have an HP Quad Core computer that came with two hard drives.I installed Windows 7 32 bit a year ago. The disk also came with a 64 bit version but the upgrade required a clean install.If I decide to install the 64 bit version, do I lose everything on both drives?
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Mar 27, 2011
I'm having issues with transferring data between hard drives in my system. I have 3 500 GB drives in my system connected via esata. Just a few minutes ago I tried transferring 24.1 GB from one hard drive to another and it took forever I was getting under 10 MB per second. Once I got everything transferred I created a folder in the drive I moved everything to and then moved the same 24.1 GB plus another folder that was 10 GB and everything transferred into the folder instant, so fast I couldn't every look to see how long it was taking cause it was there the minutes I moved the folders to the new folder. Why did it take so long transferring that same data from one hard drive to another one in my system?? I should be getting a whole lot more than 10 MB per second.
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Apr 30, 2012
I'm about to install windows 7 64bit, onto a new system, with 3 hard drives. One for OS and Data. Second one (SSD) will only be used for caching - fast boot. Third one for -printer-pagefile etc. System is ASUS P8Z77-V deluxe, which has UEFI. Do I need MBR partitions or GPT Partitions.
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May 11, 2012
how can i make a backup/ system image for my internal and external hard drives at the same time?
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Jun 29, 2012
can u backup your data (or an system image)to an internal and external hard drives at the same time?
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Aug 19, 2012
A couple of days ago, my Gateway Laptop born in 2009, crashed. Now I get a messages "missing operating system" and "installation media driver". I truly need help getting this running so i can finish my work for school.
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May 30, 2011
am trying to do a backup of my Win 7 system drive (C, but the backup utility is saying that it must backup by non-system drives (E: and H, which happen to have "System Volume Information" folders on them. They are not system drives. E: is my main utilities drive and H: is my games drive.Somehow, Windows thinks they are system drives, when in reality they aren't.Any ideas on how to change them? When I go in to Disk Management, they are not showing as system drives. They are all partitions on the same hard drive, but there are other partitions not included in the backup.
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Dec 27, 2012
Ran F12 to regain Operating system - long version. Says computer passes everything but there's no operating system found. Did this Twice. Tried "Operating System" CD that came w/ Studio 17 laptop. Hit option to run via CD & never got anywhere after an hour. Tried Reinstall Hardware disk that came w/ laptop. It shows Vista, but laptop came w/ Windows 7. See where it shows the system's checking things out, but never get anywhere.
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Jul 18, 2012
My old XP machine died. I purchased a new WIn7 mcahine and want to add my old WInXP drive to it and make it dual boot machine.
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Oct 8, 2011
make a dualboot comp by adding windows XP to a new partition. I created the new partition with 20gb. (From the 500 of my actual harddrive)But before I actually installed on that, I got distracted with a second harddrive that my dad got(for no reason). It had a full copy of Windows XP backed up on it from another computer, so I figured I would just use that for the dualboot. I plugged it in (wired the same way as my old harddrive, but different data slot), restarted, checked the harddrive in explorer - all the data was there / reading correctly / etc, and I used 'easyBCD' to add the new harddrive to the boot list.(Which, of course, crashes if I try to start it. I just wanted to see what it would do). For a reason I can't remember, I unplugged the second harddrive for a bit, started the computer on accident (I don't know if anything loaded before I shut it off), and then when I plugged it back in.Windows 7 would not launch. It goes to a DOS-like window, except it's just a flashing _ and it never does anything even after a few minutes. XP didn't work still.. so I decided to reinstall XP (as I couldn't tell which harddrive was which on the list, I unplugged the main harddrive while installing onto the new).. and when I did this.. it formatted and installed fully... then restarted.. then restarted.. and restarted.. and just kept restarting, never showing any thing past the manufacturer logo/BIOS load-button-message-thing. So, I then try to use my 3-disk Windows7Recovery disk(burned myself with a program apparently included by the manufacturer.) It installed fully, appearing to work.. but when I launched it, it said "Invalid Partition Table" and wouldn't boot past that. When I insert my driver installer disk, it gives me a basic DOS window thing. dir A: shows the files in the disk. dir B: for some reason shows the same. C: says "Error reading from drive C: DOS area: general failure". All other letter:'s just say "invalid drive". (I'm doing this with both harddrives in.) I attempted connecting the harddrives to an old computer, but it gave an error for both. (It detected the harddrives, but said it had an error reading from it. Windows Explorer asked me to format it... {i'm willing to format one of the drives if anybody thinks it will help, but the old harddrive has data I'd prefer not to lose.} ) Looking on google, I saw several problems that all have similar problems (less overdescripptive than I am though) but none of the fixes suggested worked for me. Also - as I have two different with different errors, I only need to make one of them work.)Also - my other available computer has a CD burner / floppy drive if either are required. I also have several USB's. The computer can boot from USB's and CD's (tested), and I could easily take the floppy thingy and connect it to the computer.also - this computer is probably still under warranty unless unscrewing the hard drive voids it. .. does that count as modification of the computer?
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