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[EXOTICA]

Hi there guys. Im looking for information regarding the best way to configure a dual boot system using Vista Ultimate and XpPro. Any info or advise would be great. What is the best way to set up the two 320gig 7200rpm HHD's? Should both hard drive areas be combined and then partitioned or would you recommend one operating system per drive?

OS are Vistax64 and XpPro.

 

[roy69]

Partition the drive or use 2 drives.
Install vista on 1 partition then xp on the other.
Look here for more info;
Dual Boot Vista and XP with Vista already installed - SysChat

 

[EXOTICA]

thanks for the feedback. I was thinking the better way would be to use the drives seperately.

 

[roy69]

Same difference. You can format drives with differents file formats as you can partitions. I use 2 drives. 1 for data and 1 for the os. If the os goes bad for whatever reason I do not lose the data.

 

[EXOTICA]

...good idea but I generally save all my data on an external 1000gig HDD. Ive found in the past that with Xp, the less I have on my hard drives the less glitchy it is. Im hopin Vistax64 is going to put a big smile on my face running the new Intel X9000 cpu.

 

[TheShadow]

I could recount more horror stories about dual boot systems than you'd ever want to read.....so I won't!!!
I'll spare both of us the pain of it all.

If you already have two hard drives (you didn't say if they are IDE or SATA) then you already have the answer to your problem, right in front of you.

On a SATA system, the mobo will boot from the first port where it finds an OS, so if you put the XP drive on port #0 and the Vista drive on port #1, the mobo will always boot to XP by default. (and, vise versa)

Using IDE drives is a bit trickier, but still do'able.

On my own system with an MSI K9N-Platinum mobo, I can press F11 during boot and get a nice little boot menu, showing every drive on my system, including all my USB and flash card ports.

I don't use Vista much so XP is my default OS on the first drive.
When I want to go into Vista, I just reboot, using the Boot Menu and select the Vista drive. No problem!

That keeps the two OS's on the two drives separate and provides a good place to store Ghost Backups of each drive (on the other drive's second partition).

So, if one drive takes the big dump, I can replace it, then do a Ghost restore from the backup files on the other drive and I'm back in business in just a few minutes.

To make your system truly 'bullet proof' you have to formulate a workable plan and then work that plan. I went thru all this stuff years ago, so now it's just second nature for me. I always partition every HD I set up into two partitions. The first one for the OS and most programs and the second one for "Stuff" including huge software suites like Corel or Office.
Also a critical part of my "Plan" is doing a Ghost backup of my system to an external media, at least once a week. Having a backup on DVD and in a fireproof vault is the best insurance you can get, against some disaster wiping out your system.

Cheers Mates!
The Shadow

 

[Everlong]

Like what TheShadow said, your PC will boot from the first port it finds an OS on, though with my motherboard, you can switch which order the hard drives are in to boot in to, which is the method I've used when I've had Vista and XP on different hard drives.

 

[EXOTICA]

maybe I should just load Vista Ultimate 64 bit after reading the software compatability lists available. I dont hink im going to have any major issues with the popular software vendors. thanks again guys for all your input to help this Visata newbie out. Much appreciated.

 

[roy69]

maybe I should just load Vista Ultimate 64 bit after reading the software compatability lists available. I dont hink im going to have any major issues with the popular software vendors. thanks again guys for all your input to help this Visata newbie out. Much appreciated.

Everyone has to start somewhere.