Adding a new SATA drive and Windows 7

letsbehonest

Hi,
I need a little refreshing. I have just added a new 500 Gb Sata hard drive formatted it and partitioned it with one primary and two logical sections. This is so I can Install Windows 7 on it and run it in a dual boot mode with XP which is installed on the existing HD. Do I need to disconnect the original drive before I attempt to do a new install with Win 7

fwor

I'm not familiar with Win 7, but if it's like all previous recent versions of Windows, you need it to be there and detected so that the Win 7 install knows to add it to the boot menu.

If it's not connected, you would have to manually edit the boot.ini (IIRC) to add an entry for Win XP, along with the correct volume that it should boot from.

As part of the install, Win 7 should automatically mark the new drive as the bootable one and not the existing one, but some older motherboards will only boot from the first SATA port, so you may need to swap the connectors round.

Oneday77

You should be fine. Just make sure you point Win7 towards the correct partition otherwise it will be plain sailing. My PC is dual boot at the moment and working fine.