Everywhere I read is that you should only have 1 drive connected when installing Windows in order for Windows to not put or copy the boot files onto the 2nd drive... fair enough..... now let's say I format both my drives, the 1st and 2nd... then create a partition only on the first drive, so basically, the 2nd drive is a large unpartitioned space, am I safe that way or is it still better to remove the 2nd drive? please help teh meh
duhh I know that, but that doesn't answer my question in the post! if I formatted and deleted the partition on the 2nd drive, is it still a problem? please don't answer let someone else who knows what he's talking about do that
Besides being rude with long time member and noob, you are asking for things you can actually trial and error them. Hopefully no one answers to you...
As long as the drive you are installing windows onto is plugged into SATA1 or 0 depending on your board (First SATA port) then it will install everything to that drive If you have another drive connected to SATA 1/0 and the Windows drive in a higher numbered port, it will install the bootloader / MBR to the drive in first SATA port and Windows to the drive you are trying to install to SO if you remove that other drive, you won't be able to boot without repairing MBR Basically Windows ignores which drive you want to install windows to and always installs the MBR/Bootloader to first SATA connected port
False. It's not SATA0 that gets "priority" by default. It's the one set in the BIOS/UEFI first in the boot order. It can be whichever you want to.
FALSE: There is no reason the BIOS would not use SATA0 as primary / 1st boot order unless YOU the PEBKAC changed it And no matter which one you have set in BIOS as primary, it will still write the MBR to SATA 0 / HDD connected to lowest numbered SATA port
You are absolutely mistaken. I wonder why they allow you to touch a computer. Cut your ego, it just makes people laugh at you.
I've got Windows installed on two different drives in my computer. I switch between them by changing the bios setting for which disk is the first to boot. When I installed Windows on each drive, the other drive was not disconnected. Using the ASUS utility, I can have the computer shut down and reboot into the bios where I can quickly change the boot setting with about 4 mouse clicks, save the change, and be rebooting into my other version of windows within a few minutes.
Get a clue little girl, end of convo with an uneducated self-confessed n00b, time to add to my iggy list
...taking the risk of being 'told off' Fwiw, in my experience it does, as eydee said, depend on which drive is set first in the BIOS / UEFI boot order. ...can set it up as I want.
i just reinstalled a clean copy of 8.1 on ly system 1 have 3 internal drives. one of which has a install of windows 7 as well. i just set my bios to boot from the drive i want to use first in priority listing. i have had not a single issue. i can still reboot to 7 if i like just by selecting drive in bios. worked fine for me.
Because one version of Windows is on a SSD and there isn't room for a second version. My other version is on a HD and it is my backup version and where I experiment.
If the BIOS of the machine is an EFI BIOS, it will strictly use the Boot Order given in BIOS Settings. Let say there 4 HDD's and there 2 OS's installed: HDD 1 = SATA0 (Win7) HDD 2 = SATA1 HDD 3 = SATA2 HDD 4 = SATA3 (Win8.1) and the 1. boot HDD is set to HDD 3, 2. boot to HDD 1, 3. boot to HDD 4 and 4. boot to HDD 2, automatically it will try to boot from HDD 3 (SATA2) first and if it couldn't, it will try to boot from HDD 1 (SATA0), if no success, it will try the next HDD 4 (SATA3). It's all depend on the setted boot order in BIOS! For to boot from just one specific OS, it isn't needed to change the Boot Order every time. Best way would be to ste those HDD with the most used OS as Boot Option 1. For to boot from any other of the OS's, doesn't matter howmany you've installed, just use the BIOS Boot Manager with the designed Hot Key, mostly F11, and chose the HDD with the OS you like to start up. Personally I wouldn't use any 3.party Boot manager to avoid problem in case that HDD, which holds the Boot Order Data goes down, which would prevent to start any of the other OS's! While installing those OS's, it is needed that the other HDD's are disconnected. Is that a problem? I don't think so and that would be also just a one time 'job', so it wouldn't me bother in any means! Fact is that those way would give me the freedom to be able to start any of the still available OS's even if may the most used one is down for what reason ever. It would also give me the ability for to directly start an and 'survey' why that other HDD were going down and maybe I could get it work back or just copy data from it to an other HDD! Anyway, it's up to the user to choose what way he would like most.
I amy have Mised it And if you use Disk part and a script on top of having it set in the bios it will do what you tell disk part to do in that script. it is safe to do with another drive installed but be care full . I have made the mistake of not watching which drive, I had it set to and installed to the wrong drive and lost info . but my in case, i do back ups and have three other PC's i keep that info on in storage drives.
Been there, done that too. Now I have a sticker on the side of my PC with the ID of the two drives that I have Windows on. It is not a problem with the SSD because it shows up as Samsung . . . but the HD (well I have 6 HDs in the box) I need to be careful about which HD I select). If I select the wrong HD then it will try to boot it and it will fail to boot that HD or any of the HDs.
That's why you make your script complicated enough to let you change drive numbers... look at the sig my friend.