Setup Installation :: Dual Boot On Separate Hard Drives?
Nov 6, 2012
I have Win 7 on a 60gb ssd hard drive. I would like to put another 60gb ssd drive in my computer and run win 8 off of this. Is it possible to run this as a dual boot system. Will I get the option to boot into either when I boot up.
Currently I have a machine with Windows 8 pre-installed already. But now I don't like Windows 8 as much because certain programs I want to use requires Windows 7. Though I would still like to keep Windows 8 because it's licensed. I have an extra hard drive lying around with Windows 7 loaded in it already. Now I would like to dual boot between these two drives. Do I have to turn off Secure Boot and change the boot orders around to boot the Windows 7 hard drive?
I currently have windows 8 installed. I wish to install another windows 8 os on a separate hdd on the same pc. I wish to do this because I share this pc with my brother who is paranoid that my constant tweaking somehow breaks his games installs. Is dual booting two windows 8 installations possible? If it is, what is the best way of going about it? I have an external hard drive that I backup all of my partitions to using acronis, so I'm not too worried about breaking something.
I'm trying to dual boot Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and Windows 8 Pro. I want to have each OS installed on separate Hard drives. I want the default OS to be Windows 7 (loads automatically) or goes to the boot manager screen and choose either Win 7 and Win 8.
I've been running Windows 7 on an SSD hard drive with a UEFI Boot. I'm looking to install Windows 8 on a WD Caviar Black 1 TB drive.
Steps taken:
-Burnt Windows 8 to DVD to boot and install from. -Re-ordered boot order to boot from DVD -Windows 8 install starts -Windows 8 drive screen - format the WD Caviar Black 1 TB to install Windows 8 on. -ERROR Message appears - Can't find media location (I didn't write it down but will on next install I will update). Something like 0x00007B. The solution I found was to disconnect my Windows 7 drive (and all other hard drives).
(Issue: won't that affect the set up of the dual boot?)
-Disconnected Windows 7 drive and was able to install Windows 8. -After successful install of Windows 8 I re-started my system expecting to see the dual boot menu options. However, Windows 8 loaded directly. -Changed boot drive order to SSD (with Windows 7) then WD 1TB Drive (with Windows 8). However, Windows 7 then loaded directly. -I rebooted into Windows 8 and went to the boot order menu in Settings > Control Panel > System > Startup and Restore > (might be a few other tabs). The drop down box shows Windows 8 but no Windows 7.
So, I'm sure I did something wrong on the install. Any thoughts?
If the SSD is a UEFI boot should the WD 1TB (Win 8 install drive) be the same? Is it critical to have the Windows 8 drive connected while installing Windows 8 to the other hard drive? If so, I will have to solve the error message I get after formatting the WD 1TB drive during the Win 8 install. (I know not having the specific error code doesn't work - will update tonight with that info).
Also, I have a 2TB drive that I think has a MBR partition. Would that affect things? Should I even have that? I'll confirm that too. Just hoping to possibly get the ball rolling with answers.
I currently have a machine installed with Windows 8 pro 64 bit installed on one Samsung 840 pro SSD. Works great. I recently added a second Crucial m4 SSD and would like to install Linux on it... I am having major issues doing so mainly because of UEFI... and when installing Linux it does not see Windows 8 installed on any drive therefore making it rather difficult to install both OSes.
Is it possible to have two hard drives in the computer and to be able to choose which one to start with ?
I have in mind that one hard drive has all my normal programs and the other is used for Flight simulation program.
Both hard drives would have win 8 installed. If I could use one hard drive and partition it so the flight sim is on a separate partition. However, for two reasons I wouldn't want this as the flight sim with scenery requires a lot of Gigs. and secondly I believe that it would run faster on its own hard drive.
So. Is it possible to set up the computer to decide which Drive I wish to start ? and if so, how to set it up ?
I have made my Windows 8.1 DVD, but I haven't committed to installing it yet.
I'd like to just install it on a separate partition on my second hard drive.
Normally I wouldn't hesitate to just go ahead and install it, but I'm not sure if the new Uefi bios will just except it and automatically set up the dual boot menus etc, the way that it did in the past.
Are there extra steps that I need to take before going ahead with the install.
I definitely don't want to replace my current Windows 8 install until the final version comes online at that time I will probably do a complete new install of all my software.
I cloned my existing Windows installation (8.1 pro, 32 bit) onto my new SSD. I got everything up and running, and I still have my old Windows installation on one of the partitions of my HDD.
Can I turn this setup into a dual boot?
I think this could be useful, in case the new installation gets borked, or in order to run an effective malware scan on the SSD, etc.
I have installed Blue 8.1 on a separate drive in my system along side 8.0. When I restart the 8.0 boots unless I manually select the 8.1 drive in bios. How can I alter the Boot menu to add the option to boot from either OS?
Late last Fall I bought a new Desktop, an HP H81414, with Windows 8 installed with the intention of installing Windows 7 on an SSD. I migrated Window 8 to an SSD, removed that from the system, installed new SSD and put Windows 7 on it. Both worked fine. I wound up with 2 SSD's. capable of running on the EFI BIOS machine with Secure Boot turned off. I later bought a new laptop with Windows 8. I found the Win 8 with Classic Shell to be very acceptable.
What I would like to do now ,if possible, is to mount both SSD's in the HP case and switch to either one of them at boot.
I had windows 7 running on my computer. When windows 8 came out I used a second harddrive as the windows 8 installation drive. Windows 8 automatically setup a dual boot system where every time I started the computer it took me a windows screen where I could select either windows 7 or windows 8. This has been going on since Windows 8 was released.
I decided it was getting old so I decided it was time to remove the old windows 7 harddrive. I tried doing it inside the windows 8 dual boot screen but could not find an option. So I decided to reformat the windows 7 harddrive. I did this in command prompt mode. After doing so when my computer restarted it said it could not find any harddrive to boot. Windows 8 is installed on the other harddrive, the one that was not reformatted. So how do I get it to start using that harddrive as the boot drive? I checked my bios and even physically disconnected the old HD that had windows 7 on it, but none of that seemed to work even though the Windows 8 HD is definitely in the boot order in the bios.
I've had Win 7 Pro on my laptop for over a year. I installed a 2nd hard drive to it recently and today I installed Windows 8 Pro on the 2nd hard drive. It's been a roller coaster of good & bad luck.
The first install went fine, until I tried to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Windows store, then things went bad and I had to go into Windows 7 and eventually delete the Windows 8 volume and change it from MBR to GPT because of UEFI (no secure boot enabled). What a stretch of error messages telling me I can't install Windows 8 on the blank hard drive because it was or wasn't MBR or GPT, or the automagically made partitions weren't in the right order.
After spending over 7 hours twice in a row installing Windows 8, I finally find out that there's no boot option for Windows 7 anymore.
The only clue I have is to use a Windows 7 repair disk and use diskpart.exe and make the Win 7 drive "active" but that's a little foreign to me at this point.
I'm looking in Computer Management / Disk Management from within Windows 8.
Disk 0: SYSTEM D: 438 MB NTFS (lengthened from 199 MB with EaseUS because Acronis 2014 thought it too small while crashing), Healthy (Active, Primary Partition); Win 7 E: 930.98 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition); HP_TOOLS F: 102 MB FAT 32 Healthy (Primary Partition)
I get as far as " a driver is needed to continue installation" not found, make sure its on the right media. Here is what i got done on my own..
1- BIOS setting "legacy" and U E F I" boot from USB. 2- F 9 to choose boot order.. selected USB device 3- Installation starts for WIN 7 4- Driver is needed to continue, and i have no clue what it is..some one pointed me to . f 6 f l p y-x 64 because its an HP Envy... 5- Driver not found / wrong driver.. 6- Shut down restart.......................
My DVD is Windows 7 ultimate X 32, X 64..
No matter what i cant boot form my USB /U E Fl /WIN 7 pen drive.seems like its not recognized or drivers for the USB chip set not installed.. Of course using the O E M DVD of win 7 fails. because of the G P T style.
I have Windows 8 installed on 2 Samsung SSDs - one is 840 Pro and the other is 840 Evo. This is because I work on both video and music production and would like to keep things separate.
At first I tried cloning an "old" SSD on to both Pro and Evo to make life easy, but it was a total mess:
I would boot Windows 8 on either Evo or Pro, and before the password prompt, Windows would fire up a Checkdisk on one (or more) of the 5 HD I have (please find the logs and disklayout in the attachments).
This would usually happen if for eg, I'm working on Evo and then I restart to work on Pro - or vice-versa.
But sometimes I would be working on either one of them, and this flag notification would popup asking me to restart because Windows needs to perform a diskcheck.
What is strange to me is that if I do a manual diskcheck (right-click -> Properties -> Tools), it would complete it, the notification disappears but would return a second or two later.
There was a minor issue where for eg, some options in the Control Panel were still pointing to drive H: which before the cloning, was my original C: drive.
Otherwise all software was working perfectly fine.
So I decided to do a clean re-install on both Pro and Evo hoping to solve this diskcheck issue once and for all.
This was 10 days ago, and for the past 10 days I had used almost exclusively the Evo drive. Today I need to work on Pro but Windows wouldn't get past the diskcheck and on to the password prompt.
It's saying "Preparing for Repair", then changes to "Diagnosing your PC" but then this blue screen pops up asking me to choose between Shut Down or Advanced Options.
This happened on rare occasions, but before the fresh install, I would do this perhaps a couple of times in a row (i.e. go to the blue screen Advanced Options and click Exit and Continue to Windows 8) restart, and it would eventually go past the diskcheck and allow me to log in and work. But today it just won't do it.
EDIT: I don't know if it matters but as it is now, it automatically boots up on Pro unless I hit F12 and choose to boot on Evo. But as I said earlier I had only been using Evo for the past 10 days since the re-install.
Attached please find the Srt logfiles which I found by following a path shown to me on that blue screen.
The strange thing is that the path started with drive H: and why drive H: and not C: (i.e. the Pro drive, being the current Windows boot drive). But when I booted on Evo, and went on drive J: (the drive letter that Pro is assigned when I'm on Evo), I found the logfiles there.
I had my system set up for Dual boot (on separate hard drives) for both Win 8.1 and Win 7. Win 8.1 developed a problem and unfortunately the only back up I had (my fault) was for Win 8 before I installed Win 7 and the dual boot.
I reinstalled from the backup and then updated Win 8 to 8.1. Both the Win 8.1 64 bit and the Win 7 64 bit work OK but the dual boot is now missing in Win 8.1.
Is there any way of repairing/creating the dual boot, either in Win 7 or Win 8, without using BCD Edit?
Laptop came with Windows 8 and has been updated to 8.1
Installed Ubuntu on a new partition, but no matter how many times I try, I can't get the machine to load Grub at power-on. If I boot Super Grub Disk/Rescatux, I see the installed Ubuntu, but other tools (like EasyBCD) only see Windows.
Apparently, we're no longer using MBR? Everything I used to know about computers seems to have become false in the last year or 2. How do I get Grub working on this new EFI thing?
I have a dual boot (Windows 7 & 8 on separate hard drives) system that is performing flawlessly. I'm considering doing the free 8.1 update (updating Windows 8), but concerned that it might mess up my current beautiful dual boot configuration.
just want to check that i can duel boot win 8? in short unplug my win 7 drive and install win 8 on a separate new drive. plug back in and choose between 7 or 8.
I have sony vpceh3aen laptop with windows 7 home basic. I have IOS file of embedded windows 8.1 industry pro with update via dreamspark.com. just now I run windows 8.1 upgrade assistance and its says "your pc's firmware doesn't support secure boot so you won't be able to use it in windows 8.1". Some persons says that not a problem. I not like to upgrade my OS but I want create dual boot with windows 7 home basic and embedded windows 8.1 industry pro. my questions:
1. can I possible to dual boot? if possible how to create it and what are changes(in BIOS and windows 7 settings) needs to make in my laptop?
2. I have pen drive and DVD, which is best for create dual boot with IOS file?
3. I have 100GB free logical partition. that is enough for embedded windows 8? if not how much need to increase?
So I have a Toshiba laptop with win 8 preinstalled in it I want to dual boot it with win XP However I managed to boot to the CD after some research but when I reach to installing win xp to my virtual partition I can't seem to find it I just see my HDD as one without a partition... what can I do?
Dual boot... I installed a new SSD and want to install a clean copy of Windows 8 Pro 64 bit on it while retaining Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit on my existing HHD. I have an upgrade copy of Windows 8. Will I be able to dual boot with this set-up?
i have installed windows 7 and xp in dual boot, but i want to delete both os without leaving any traces and install only one os that is windows 8. i got the tutorial for deleting any one os but how to delete both os and install a fresh windows eight . ?
Ok, I have an SSD. Windows 8 Consumer preview was installed on it. I then partitioned it in half in Consumer Preview. I then installed Windows 7 on the newly partitioned fresh half of the SSD. When I'd boot up I would get the usual BIOS black type screen asking whether I wanted to boot W7 or Windows 8 with a 30 seconds timer. PERFECT.
So today I installed Windows 8 Pro, I formatted the Windows 8 Consumer Preview half of the SSD using the install disk before installing Windows 8 Pro.
So now I have Windows 8 Pro on one half of the partition, W7 remained untouched on the other half. HOWEVER, when I boot now it automatically boots to Windows 8 Pro and gives me no option to choose what OS I want to load !_!
I have both 7 and 8 installed in a dual boot system and have now decided that I no longer need Windows 7.
I have read and re-read the tutorial on removing Windows 7 so I am very familiar with the method however, it does not work for me. In disk manager I select the partition to be deleted and right click on it as instructed in the tutorial. In the drop down menu the option to "delete volume" is greyed out and not available so I am stuck.
I have a sony vaio vpcyb3v1e. I have windows 8.1 installed and i tried using a bootable usb to install as multi boot, the xp black edition on a separate partition. After doing that i couldn't be able to login in the windows 8.1 OS. I got the message Load needed DLLS for kernel.
I already have a W7-Windows 8 dual boot machine.I want to upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 8.1
Are there any major considerations I need to be aware of when upgrading Windows 8 to Windows 8.1? Does the Windows 8.1 upgrade handle and cope with an already dual-booting machine? I don't want to wreck/lose my w7 installation at all.
I have a question on the best way to install Windows 7 as a dual boot on an existing Windows 8 installation on a new Asus Laptop. Most of the tutorials I've seen assume the pre-existing installation is Windows 7, and say that Windows 7 needs to be installed first, not an option when your Windows 8 comes pre-installed.
I have an Asus F75, and here is the partitioning: 1. 300 MB EFI System Partition, FAT32 2. 900 MB NTFS Recovery Partition (would seem to be the MS Reserved partition, is that correct?) 3. 279 GB NTFS OS Partition 4. 398 GB NTFS Data Partition 5. 20 GB NTFS Recovery Partition
It sounds like after installing Windows 7, the boot menu will be the Win7 text boot selection menu if you use that as the default OS, which is what I plan on doing, so I believe there isn't anything I need to do to that, is that correct?
I have turned of Fast Boot in Windows 8, and disabled Secure Boot in the system BIOS.
What should I do about the existing Data partition, which will be the Win7 partition. Should I:
a. Leave that intact and simply install Win7 to it, or b. Delete the partition, install Win7 and allow the install to manage the unallocated space?
Do I have any other considerations other than collecting all the Win 7 drivers for the laptop (which I have already done)?