Dual boot-XP Pro and Vista

I currently have 2 SATA drives: XP Pro is on a 250gb on SATA1; on SATA2 I have a 320gb drive with no OS, it's just for music, video, docs, and stuff like that. I'm thinking about adding a small drive (like a SATA 40gb or 80gb) and just installing Vista to it mainly so I can learn more about Vista and it's quirks and the ins-n-outs of it now that XP is being swept under the carpet by MS. So the Vista drive would go on SATA3. Now, what would be the best way to boot to this? Using a boot manager? Or just going into the BIOS and changing the boot order each time I want to boot to Vista? Since SATA1 is currently drive C:, and SATA2 is drive F: (my optical drives are D: and E: ), when Vista boots, will that drive on SATA3 be labeled as C:? or will it come up next in line as G:? And if it's labeled as C:, what happens when I boot back into XP? Will the Vista drive on SATA3 still be C:, or will the XP drive on SATA1 be C: again as usual? So, now that I've completely confused everyone (myself included), anybody have any insight here?

Thanks!
:-D :major

 

Vista will create it's own bootmanager from which you can choose 'older versions' or Vista itself. Very easy, actually a no-brainer. Also it's good that you don't have any IDE HDD's in the mix as that screws up a lot of installs, main reason I'm all SATA now dual booting. Have fun!

Don't worry about drive sequence, just install to your 40GB drive as the size will be shown when the options are presented. One thing to remember is that when you're in Vista, it will see itself as living in C and your other drives will be differently labeled. If you have a lot of partitions, it would be good to label them to avoid confusion

 

BTW, I didn't answer your exact questions on drives as I was getting a headache reading all that.:-D You'll immediately see what I mean when you boot into Vista as all those questions will be answered. BTW, Vista does not use boot.ini as XP does, it basically tolerates it, completely different animal but that's fodder for another thread. oh, about BIOS nothing needed to change there except for the normal change to boot to CD first is all that is necessary.

 

Thanks a-dog! Sorry about the headache But you might want to stock up on the Advil I'm going to keep the drive on SATA1 with XP Pro as my main OS, and will be booting to Vista only occasionally. So, you're saying that when I install Vista, it creates its own boot manager? So when I power up, Vista will provide a menu and say "Do you want to boot this drive, or that drive?" How's that going to happen if Vista is on it's own drive on SATA3? Seems to me that in order to select which OS is going to be booted, I'd have to select the drive somehow; either with a 3rd party boot manager installed on C: (the XP Pro drive on SATA1) or going into the BIOS and and changing the boot drive when I want to boot into Vista on SATA3.... -OR- maybe if I put the Vista drive on SATA1 and the XP drive on SATA2 and the data drive on SATA3, then the Vista boot manager will ask where I want to boot since the Vista drive would now be the first SATA drive..... the more I think about it, the more I think that a 3rd party boot manager would be best, that way I wouldn't have to move any cables around. Any thoughts?

Thanks! :-D

(BTW- each hard drive has been partitioned as a single partiton. I don't cut my drives into smaller pieces... I add more drives instead )

 

Exactly!

You don't have to move cables or change BIOS boot sequence or use a bootmanager at all unless you want to isolate Vista from the rest of your drives, which doesn't seem as that's what you want to be doing anyways.

Vista will create a new MBR record which will include your current XP boot.ini There is no need to switch cables or change BIOS settings apart from booting to CD. I'll find a pic for you of the bootloader.

 

If you have enough free space on HDD1 ie SATA1, then maybe easier just to partition that drive and install Vista on the same HDD but in its own primary partition.

That is the way I do it. I much prefer to keep windows out of the equation and use a third party boot manager which would be installed in the first primary partition ie XP. I am also a bit fearful that windows may mess up my MBR / partition tables (perhaps this is just an irrational phobia)

This drive letter ordering is odd. XP allocates drive letter ordering starting with the primary and active ie bootable partition as C: and then looks for other partitions ie extended / logical and orders then in sequence from C:. So your SATA2 drive (if it was internal HDD) should be D: (assuming it was an extended partition holding only one logical partition)

The o/s would then label the opticals as E: and F:.

Is your 320Gb data HDD external as that would make sense in respect of the drive lettering which you have provided.

Also in my opinion always a good idea to relabel any optical drives well down the alphabet. I always start my opticals at R:. I use X: and onwards for virtual drives.

Good Luck

 

Sorry about the flash but the flashless pics came out blurry. This is what you get upon standard bootup as the Vista bootloader. You make your choice here. If you have more than one Vista installed it will give that choice here. If you have more than one legacy OS installed, it will show up by entering 'earlier versions'. I hope this clarifies things. Just to restate, I do not switch cables nor do I fool around in BIOS, it's the way to go IMO. BTW, there might be bootloaders out there but I never found a need for one though you may.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb106/augie_026/bootloader.jpg

 

I've been at this since before the betas and I have always recovered my MBR when it did get screwed but never lost a byte on any drive/partition, maybe I'm lucky.

 

how about I install XP in my SATA1 drive, first partition, then install Vista on SATA1 drive, but another partition? that should work right? And I'll have the choice between XP and Vista at boot up?

 

That's perfect, I do it the same way. It'll be real easy to do as long as XP goes in first.

 

At one point I said this:

...and a response was this:

I added the hard drive on SATA2 just recently; much later than when I first set up Windows with the 2 optical IDE drives as D: and E:. I had the option to re-assign drive letters, but I'm used to the way it is now and I like having my DVDRW as D:, so I just made the new data drive as F:

To Auggie: THANKS! This has been very informative! I appreciate your time and efforts. Now I just have to take the Vista plunge.... thanks again.... :highfive :dood

[dlb]
:major