[Krissy82]

Background: I have two computers, my current one, Inspiron 531 w/ Vista Home Premium SP1 32 bit that has a DVD/CD ROM+-RW combo drive and I'm having problems with it reading discs and it has been recommended to me to separate the two and have 1 DVD-ROM drive and 1 CD+-RW Drive like what is on my Dell Dimension 4600. The Inspiron has a Seagate 250gb SATA HDD

The Dell Dimension 4600 has a WDC 200gb SATA HDD that is currently running XP home premium sp3. It works fine, just needs some memory and graphic card upgrades. I want to take my HDD out of my Inspiron 531 and put it in my Dimension 4600. Both HDD's already have OS's on them. I want to keep both OS's, and on separate HDD's, otherwise I would just install on a formatted partition on same HDD instead of adding 2nd HDD.

What I need to know is how do I "dual boot" with 2 HDD's ?

Is it the same as multi-booting when the OS's are on different partitions on the same HDD?


Sorry that post is so long but I'm a newbie to this so I want to make sure I have left anything out.

And sorry if this is in the wrong forum, wasn't sure where to post it.

Edited by Krissy82, 17 August 2009 - 10:44 AM.

[Advertisements]

you can dual boot with multiple drives...but it's not easy to set up after they're both installed...

also...XP DOES NOT transfer between hardware profiles after it's been installed...i believe vista is the same way...once it's installed you have to do a repair installation as soon as you move it to another hardware platform

so it may just be easier to install vista (assuming you have a retail disk and a license key for it) on the other machine instead of trying to move the hard drive

[dsenette]

you can dual boot with multiple drives...but it's not easy to set up after they're both installed...

also...XP DOES NOT transfer between hardware profiles after it's been installed...i believe vista is the same way...once it's installed you have to do a repair installation as soon as you move it to another hardware platform

so it may just be easier to install vista (assuming you have a retail disk and a license key for it) on the other machine instead of trying to move the hard drive

[Krissy82]

you can dual boot with multiple drives...but it's not easy to set up after they're both installed...

also...XP DOES NOT transfer between hardware profiles after it's been installed...i believe vista is the same way...once it's installed you have to do a repair installation as soon as you move it to another hardware platform

so it may just be easier to install vista (assuming you have a retail disk and a license key for it) on the other machine instead of trying to move the hard drive

I don't know what you mean when you say "transfer between hardware profiles" or "move to another hardware platform".

I wouldn't be installing XP, it's already installed on the HDD that's in the computer. The HDD that I want to add to the computer has Vista Home Premium 32BIT on it (it's licensed). I want to keep XP because a lot of the games I have are not compatible with Vista.

[dsenette]

a hardware profile is just that....the group of hardware in a specific machine...with XP (and to my knowledge XP) if you try to make a major change in the underlying hardware (i.e. move a hard drive with XP or vista to another machine entireley) then the OS won't boot...at all... so you'd need to do a repair installation on the one that got moved...and that MAY or may not solve the problem....which would result in you having to reinstall the OS anyway..

[Krissy82]

I know that it's been a loooooooong time but just wanted to Thank you for your help.

The HDD on the Inspiron 531 pooped out on me so had to get a new one. After several other things went bad I decided to just throw the heap of junk in the trash and just get a new computer with Windows 7 on it (obviously I kept the brand new HDD. I still have the older Dimension 4600 that is working perfectly even after 7 years.