2 Hard Drives with seperate OP systems

[Impulz]

If i could get some help that would be great!

I have 2 hard drives in my PC.

I changed the jumper settings on the 40GB Western Digital (to slave i think) and i am now booting up normally in my 160GB Seagate and its recognising the Western Digital as F: even thou the Western Digital has XP on it aswell. (hope that makes sense)

Would someone with knowledge be kind enough to explain me step by step on how to:

-Reformat the 40GB HD
-Reformat the 160GB HD(which one should come first)
-Put XP Pro on both of the HD's and be able to switch between the 2 operating systems upon boot up (that can be done cant it?)

Any help, greatly appriciated!

 

[Half Evil]

as far as im concerened thats not possible, but basicly what you want is to have 2 computers in one case?

 

[wiktorek01]

it's possible, i have that right now
okay its really simple, but i know i'll mess up explainning it....anyone want to take over? lol...Kage??

 

[ASSEMBLER]

you can use a program called hyperos its great.

 

[wiktorek01]

k, why won't u just instal Xp on both drives??
and just set either one as a master and either one as a boot.

 

[electro1]

why don't you install both of the operating systems on both harddrive thats what i did in jan 05
and you would haveto install both in different directories

 

[Impulz]

k, why won't u just instal Xp on both drives??
and just set either one as a master and either one as a boot.

They do both have XP on them, but what do you mean by boot? At the moment it recognises both of them (the 40gig one as drive F) even thou it has xp on it.

I want to be able to select which harddrive to boot into right from when i press the power button...

Can that be done?

 

[wiktorek01]

so when you turn your computer on, which os runs? the one on the 40 or your 160?

because if you have 2 os then it should automatically ask you which one you want.

 

[Impulz]

so when you turn your computer on, which os runs? the one on the 40 or your 160?

because if you have 2 os then it should automatically ask you which one you want.

Yea thats what i was hoping for but it doesnt....

When i first bought the computer it came with the 40...

I than bought a 160 and put it in but didnt know if they would both work so i simply disconnected the power plug to the 40 and ran only the 160.

When i finally decided to connect both up, boot up and see what happens, it would try to boot up, and it give me a message "boot failure, insert boot disc"....than i changed the jumper on the 40 to 'slave' tried booting up up again and this time it booted up in the 160 as always and it simply recognises the 40 as drive F as obviously C is the 160, D is the cd rw and E is the dvd burner....(keeping in mind the 40 still ahs xp on it but that obviously doesnt matter)

I want to be able to switch between the 2 hard drives upon boot up...im thinking maybe its all about playing with the jumper settings?

 

[lurkswithin]

More than likely, you lost the boot files to your 40 gig. The XP boot manager is notorious for this. It will ONLY allow 1 Master Boot Record to be installed...period. That is why I can't stand it (personally).
To get it to boot to both os you will need to reformat and reinstall xp on the slave drive through xp on the "c" drive This will get you the dual boot option.By installing the SAME os on the two drives seperately the boot manager conflicted and dismantled the boot capabilities from the slave drive and it doesn't recognize it as a bootable drive, only as a slave drive with programs installed.
a real pain in the butt. boot up and go to:control panel>computer management>disk management and in left field select disc management and in right field right click on the drive you need to work with(40 gig) and r click then (try this) "make the drive active" apply and ok out then reboot and see if the dual boot prompt shows up. If not you will have to go back and then using the management consol,reformat the drive, make it a logical drive and then use explorer to install the new OS to the drive.
***read my next post****