Duel Booting Win7 and Vista over 2 HDDs?

Question

So, I want to get a low capacity HDD and use it primarily for Win7 to boot from. I want to duel boot it with Vista. I currently have Vista HP 32-bit and plan to install Win7 ultimate 64-bit on the other HDD. But I have a few questions:

1) If I install in on a second drive, when I boot to Win7 will I still have all my documents and programs? Or will I have to install everything again!

2) My other main question is will I have driver issues with my hardware if I duel boot Vista and Win7.

3) If I feel like I want to get rid of Vista and just have Win7, how would I get rid of it without a reformat?

4) Will I be able to choose which one to boot from without changing boot priority in the BIOS?

Thanks!

Answer 1

1. You'll have all your documents on the other hard drive, but I don't think you can run programs from the other hard drive.



2. No, you shouldn't.



3. You can just format the drive with vista on.



4. Not if you're using separate hard drives. It literally takes 10 seconds to choose which one you want to boot from though.



Hope that helped.



Edit: Jim, installing two operating systems on one HDD is never recommended. Especially with windows 7, as resizing partitions can corrupt files, resulting in an error message stating that windows isn't genuine.

Answer 2

I have always thought of dual booting in the context of two separate partitions (each with its own Windows installed) on the one Hard Drive.

Your 32bit/64bit plan seems strange because 32-bit is for computers running up to 3.5GB RAM while 64-bit is for computers running 4GB RAM and over.

Unless your original HDD is a smallish one, I see no need for a second HDD

Answer 3

the way is to have Vista on a seperate problematicalchronic to XP. Having in basic terms put in Vista as a triple boot with XP and Linux, i can't for the existence of me, comprehend why anybody would decide on Vista. It does not do something that XP can't and this is lots extra source hungry and slower.