adding a new harddrive and dual booting?

[falsepride]

with the release of WD velociraptor, and already a 10$ price drop on new egg very fast, the temptation not to upgrade to a 10K rpm hdd is getting unbarable. now i might regret making this decision later, but im also going to get Vista, probably ultimate, or pro(or whatever level is before business)

id like to install vista on the new hdd, and leave my copy of xp home and all my files alone on my current hdd. is it possible to install vista on the new hdd, and leave my current one alone, and set it up, to load xp by default, but have it so i can press a key or something to give the option to load vista?

im guessing this could be done in bios by changing the boot disk preferences, but id like to know before i possibly lose all of my current files.

also if it is possible for the vista to access the xp harddrive and vice versa? it would make transporting neccessary files easier.

also any suggestions to go with xp pro instead of vista, would be greatly appreciated.(i need to get rid of xp home, as xp home wasnt multithreaded, from what i read, and i just have good hardware going to waste)

[DJMaze]

Currently i stepped off this kind of setup.
I noticed that i don't reboot anymore to a different system just because it takes time.

Instead i switched to use VirtualBox and boot any OS from within my GNU/Linux distro.
Benefit is that i can keep them lightweight without installing my preferred software in all OS's.
Fast booting and less management.


If you want to stick with dual-boot Windows it is possible, There is no boot config needed except that your main partition "C:" needs a boot.ini configured.
Vista will detect the other Windows and you're of to go.

[falsepride]

i dont have the time to check out virtual box right now, but in the future im getting rid of my xp home and the old IDE hdd. im on a slow path to eliminate IDE ribbon cables from my computer. this room gets hot, and anything i can do to drop even a few degrees makes a huge difference, plus i spent enough $$ on this rig, i atleast want it to look sexy

so wouldnt virtual box be unecessary in the future as i migrate everything. but then again as im writing this, leaving xp home might be useful when vista gives me trouble installing things etc

actually any thoughts on if i should leave xp home on there

[DJMaze]

i wouldn't be the one to ask, as i switched to GNU/Linux mainly because i hated everything Microsoft did after Windows 2000.
Just using XP and Vista to test if my applications/websites still work.

Vista has many drawbacks when it comes to speed. I even noticed that people brought back their PC's due to Vista destroying their hard drives.
Would be bad to destroy your rig

Setting up VirtualBox is pretty easy and done within a hour.
Switching later on would be hard though, you need to move your whole virtual drive content to a solid drive partition, then run the Vista DVD again to modify the MBR.
Another issue is that Vista needs a lot of power so you can't get all benefits of Vista through a VM.

However, moving your dual-boot to single boot is not easy as well. You can't just move your second HD to be primary "C:" because it will be missing the windows "boot" files.
Upgrading XP to Vista is also hard, there might be software conflicts.

Just dual-boot and when you're done with XP just do the following:
- move important files to some sort of backup device
- Format C: and D:
- Swap you new fast drive to be primary
- Install Vista fresh
- Restore backup data

[falsepride]

this all sounds a lot harder than id like it to be, at this point the most important question is, if i dual boot, will that cause my new hdd to not operate at its fullest potential?

how does an OS destroy a HDD? that just seems like an odd thing. vista destroys my brand new HDD and microsoft will be replacing it or else.

i do hate a lot that windows does, but they do manage to get some things right, somewhat. besides the fact that having a large console is too unatractive for people, and therefore not slapping a bigger/better heatsink in it, the xbox 360 is a good piece of hardware/software. and i dont regret picking a zune over an ipod at all.

it feels like their new technologies are good, but windows is being recycled, it could use a breath of fresh are.

[Redline]

There is (almost) no need to bother with dual boot configuration these days with the advent of VMware and other virtualization tools. With a dual boot setup you have to close and save all your programs before switching to the other OS. With a virtual machine, you can just fire it up from within your host operating system. File transfer is easy enough using shared folders or the builtin administrative shares (\\computername\x$).

When you want to finally switch to the new OS, just backup your files (or your virtual machine), load the new OS so that it's all by its lonesome, and transfer your files back over or even load up the previous virtual machine on the new installation until you get around to transferring all your files/programs over.

I use VMWare all the time to play with linux, or to try things out with Windows that I'd rather not do on my host computer (registry hacks, freeware tests etc)