Rocky Posted November 28, 2010 Share Posted November 28, 2010 I have installed Win7 on a split new 1TB seagate. Now I am going about reinstalling all the 40 odd programmes I use and moving all the files off the old HD onto the new one. There's hours of work there so... Until I get Win7 setup and running 100% with all that stuff, what I've been doing is keeping my current XP OS completely safe on the old HD and using it daily. When I have time to do some W7 transfers I pull the SATA cable on my old HD and connect up the new W7 HD. Then I start pulling stuff across from my external drive. I'm doing that because I think there's a risk of complications having two HDs with an OS installed connected at the same time. I am sure I had a major FUBAR with that once. So I am pulling SATA cables daily while I ###### about getting W7 setup. It's getting tedious though, and opulling cables every day aint very good either. Is it safe to leave both HD's connected at boot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannik Posted November 28, 2010 Share Posted November 28, 2010 It's safe, yes, or at least safer than pulling plugs all the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pave Low Posted November 28, 2010 Share Posted November 28, 2010 You'll probably be fine but just to mention a possibility... If both physical drives have MBR's and Both OS's were installed independently of each other neither knowing the other exists. you may find they don't play nice when both are connected at same time EG you may find it automatically boots into windows 7 and doesn't dual boot with XP now if that does happen you'd probably be able to go into the BIOS and manually change the boot order priority (but would have to do it each time wanted to changed O/S) or you can use something like Easybcd or a repair install but with a windows dual boot they become interlinked and potentially harder to extricate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROCO*AFZ* Posted December 1, 2010 Share Posted December 1, 2010 Does your bios have a press f whatever for boot options. As long as your hdd's have different serial numbers and you know which is which, you can do it that way. I dual booted Vista and windows 7 till i got everything where i wanted it without messing with a software dual boot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted December 1, 2010 Author Share Posted December 1, 2010 Yes in the end it was very easy. If I needed to boot from XP to run an old program or something I just hit del at boot to get into bios and selected it as the boot drive. My concern about having two boot drives was unfounded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROCO*AFZ* Posted December 1, 2010 Share Posted December 1, 2010 Accessing the xp shouldn't be a problem, but accessing your windows 7 user profile from xp would be. And don't take ownership of anything if it won't allow access to it or it will mess you up. Other then that should be no issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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