One computer, Two hard drives...2 OS?

aliasojo

I have a pc which runs Vista.

I also have the hard drive taken from an old pc which is now sitting in a docking station and is accessed through usb.

If I format the old hard drive....can I install windows xp on it? If I can.....I take it I just insert the disk in the new pc as usual and there will be an option where the usb dock/hard drive will show?

gaming_guy

i wouldn't recommend using a usb hdd to boot an OS as it would be really slow.

i would shrink the size of the vista partition (using the disk management tools in vista) then install XP on the partition that was created using disk management.

i will warn you that you have to overwrite the bootloader several times because xp will put its bootloader on the hdd meaning you can't boot into vista. you then have to boot off a vista disk to repair the vista bootloader (meaning you cant boot into XP). then finally you have to download a program to modify the vista bootloader to add an entry so that you can boot into xp

aliasojo

Thanks gg. Sounds like far too much effort tbh. I dont actually need to do this for any reason, I just thought it might come in handy to have 2 OS at some point and I thought it was a straightforward option. :beer:

gaming_guy

you can always try virtualization (with programs like Virtualbox or microsoft virtual PC) which allows you to run both vista & xp at the same time.

if you do go down that route, i'd use virtualbox or the free vmware server (v1.0.7 or .8 are older, but are better and faster)

spud17

Dual booting guide.
http://apcmag.com/the_definitive_dualbooting_guide_linux_vista_and_xp_stepbystep.htm

ronald208

I have 2 hard drives in my computer one with Vista and the other with XP. It originally came with XP. My son is a software engineer and he was at Microsoft in Seatle and got a copy of Vista for $20 and gave it to me.

What I did was remove the XP hard drive, connected the spare drive and installed Vista. It is important to remove the other drive that way you don't have to bother about what order the computer boots or bother about compatibility etc.

I then put the XP drive back in the computer. Mine are SATA drives. However one of the drives is an IDE drive but I got a cable that converts it to a SATA drive.

When the computer boots up if I press F8 I get a boot menu and I choose which hard disk I want to boot from.

So now I have the equivalent of 2 computers with 2 OS's.
Ron