Dual Booting Hard Drives?

[Loren1711]

Alright so heres the issue. Any advice that can be offered would be fantastic.

So I currently have 2 hard drives on my desktop computer. The first is a 120gb and the second is 500gb. Each drive has a fresh format and install of XP Pro SP3.

Is what I am trying to do is be able to boot to either hard drive with no correlation to the other whatsoever, without having to unplug the one I am not using. I would like to use one drive for downloading/web browsing etc. and the other for more secure things. Ideally I would turn on the computer, hit delete, go into the bios and quickly change which hard drive I want to boot from. If this doesn't make sense as to my goal, please ask me to clarify.

In essence there would be two separate computers, different hard drives, but operating off the same ram/processor/ other hardware.

So the way it is setup now, I can choose which hard drive I can boot from, and it will boot from there and load the drives respective desktop/files etc. but in the My Computer screen I can still see the other drive.

How do I change it so that the drives are in no way shape or form available from one another. Is this even possible? What are my alternatives to accomplishing my intended purpose without buying a separate computer.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Loren

 

[Taylor1]

this might help you: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

 

[wol-va-rine]

Alright so heres the issue. Any advice that can be offered would be fantastic.

So I currently have 2 hard drives on my desktop computer. The first is a 120gb and the second is 500gb. Each drive has a fresh format and install of XP Pro SP3.

Is what I am trying to do is be able to boot to either hard drive with no correlation to the other whatsoever, without having to unplug the one I am not using. I would like to use one drive for downloading/web browsing etc. and the other for more secure things. Ideally I would turn on the computer, hit delete, go into the bios and quickly change which hard drive I want to boot from. If this doesn't make sense as to my goal, please ask me to clarify.

In essence there would be two separate computers, different hard drives, but operating off the same ram/processor/ other hardware.

So the way it is setup now, I can choose which hard drive I can boot from, and it will boot from there and load the drives respective desktop/files etc. but in the My Computer screen I can still see the other drive.

How do I change it so that the drives are in no way shape or form available from one another. Is this even possible? What are my alternatives to accomplishing my intended purpose without buying a separate computer.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Loren

one simple option is to boot up in each and create a user account in each, set a password, and right click on the My Documents folder, click properties, then the sharing tab and set it to private, I know this will make each My Documents folder inaccessible from the other boot up but I don't know how to make the whole drive inaccessible, but your My Documents folder and subfolders (My Music, My Pictures, etc...) will be secured from users that don't know how to boot up in safe mode and take possession of them...

 

[Jesusfrk611]

How do I change it so that the drives are in no way shape or form available from one another. Is this even possible? What are my alternatives to accomplishing my intended purpose without buying a separate computer.

What's wrong with showing the opposite hard drive when booted up on one hard drive? If you are already dual booting, just don't go to that other hard drive when you are booted on one hard drive... Saves you a lot of trouble, unless you have a reason for it.

 

[Loren1711]

Basically the reason is more or less a security concern. On the smaller hard drive I plan to orchestrate trading of sorts, while on the other hard drive I would like to be able to freely download torrents etc.

The only other thing I can think of to completely eliminate this other drive would be to use a PCI card with a SATA adapter. Can anyone think of a way to do it with this?

My idea would be that some how you would turn that PCI slot off when booting the other hard drive, and when you wanted the one connected to the slot you would turn it on. Is there a way to do this in the BIOS?

Thanks again for any help,
Loren