Two OS in two SATA hard disk??

[Natty]

Hi,

I have an existing SATA hard disk with Windows XP and partitioned into C:, D: and E: drives.

Two days back, I have got a new SATA hard disk with Windows 2003 server with two partitions of C: and D: drives.

Can I connect these two SATA hard disks at a time? Will my BIOS will auto detect the two OS in two hard disks for OS boot selection or I have to manually configure them?

How the partition names will be assigned as both the hard disks has C: and D: drives?

I will be happy for good responses which will solve my problem!

Thanks in advance!

Natty

[Kniwor]

No the motherboard will not do anything you imagined, but you can use both the OS'.

The motherboard will boot you into the OS on the HDD that is set as your boot HDD first, so in order to use any one of them, you just have to go into the BIOS and change the boor order of HDD's. There is one more thing you can do.

If you have ASUS, while booting, press F8 and it will show a list of devices to boot from, choose the HDD u want to boot into.

If using MSI Press F11 to do the same.

[casanova]

Yes

Your boot.ini in c:\ should be like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

Add the following line

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 2003 Server"

If u want XP to be ur default OS, your boot.ini should look like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 2003 Server"

If you want 2003 server to be default, boot.ini should look like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 2003 Server" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

U can read here

dual boot from dual harddisk??

[Kniwor]

Oh!, thanks casanove, I didn't notice both those OS' were windows.

[Natty]

Hi Kniwor,

Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi Casanova,

Excellent and precise solution! I tried exactly what you have mentioned and I am able to choose the OS without plug in and plug out my SATA wires everytime!

However, I will be interested to know the possibility of using the data of one hard disk under the OS of another hard disk is loaded! I can see the partitions of another hard disk but no partition names are assigned and I couldn't acces the data.

It wil be great, if I am able to see the combined disk data of both the hard disks!

Any suggestions????

Thanks in advance!

Natty