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.

Renegade 13 · #7 April 25th, 2007, 06:23 PM

Forgive me for my ignorance, but wouldn't it be easier to use a (or several) CD-RW('s) to manually copy the necessary files from the old hard drive and copy them onto the new hard drive?

Fyron · #8 April 25th, 2007, 08:14 PM

CD-RWs are horrendously slow, and do not help much if you forget about some files you want off of the old hdd. Much easier to just connect both (post installation of XP Pro on the new hdd).

narf poit chez BOOM · #9 April 26th, 2007, 04:00 AM

94.2GB. No thanks on CD transfer.

Fyron · #10 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.