Dual boot - separate drives

D

duckylegs

Member
I've read all dual boot posts and can't find a solution to my problem. After a recent crash and re-install of XP SP3, I have the following setup:

Disk 0 - Drive C: System - this disk is partitioned to C: and F:, F has XP installed but is not being used, can be deleted. C: has nothing installed on it, just left it while I recovered data from it after the crash

Disk 1 - Drive D: Boot this disk has XP installed and is my live data

Disk 2 - Drive E: Healthy

I want to install change my E: drive (the newest and fastest drive) to C:, make it the system disk, install Windows 7 to it and dual boot it with XP on drive D.

I've been told I need to use EasyBCD to move things around, but can anybody give me some step by steps on what should do?

Thanks in advance
 
Hi Ducky, welcome to NST.
The drives don't have letters associated with them physically. The letters are just entries in the registry of the booted system, and have no connection or correlation system to system except a coincidental one, unless you manually set the letters to match, yourself.
Format your new drive with the partitions you want before you Install W7, giving them sensible labels so that you don't get confused about which space is which. (If you let W7 install to blank space, it will create a "secret", unlettered, inaccessible boot partition in addition to the C:\ disk)
Disconnect the other drives (so that W7 doesn't decide to hide its boot files somewhere on them), boot W7 DVD, install the OS on your pre-defined partition of choice.
Reconnect the other disks, making sure that the W7 disk is first in the BIOS boot sequence.
Boot W7, install EasyBCD 2.0 latest build, add an entry for XP, accept the offer to auto-configure.
It will do everything for you.
 
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