Dual booting Windows from 2 sata hard drives?

[Crowbait]

Morning All! I was told by a friend your forums might be able to help me...
In my computer I have 2 hard drives with a copy of Win XP (home) on each. I'm looking for an easier way to select which drive I want to boot with out having to go to my "bios" boot priorty to tell the computer which one I want to use??? Any help will be fully appreciated.

 

[Tedster]

can't do that.... sorry...

and it's not a good idea to have it on two drives on the same system....

 

[Crowbait]

With all do respect Tedster...I have been running these 2 drives this way for over a year with absolutly no problems. I use one drive for work and the other for BF2. Both the drives and my system work super! I am just looking for an easier way to select which drive to boot with out going to the bios to do it!
Any one else out there agree with Tedster here...it can't be done and my setup is not good with 2 drives on the same system???

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

I`m pretty sure what you`re trying to do can be achieved, provided the hard drives are both on the same ide channel.

You`ll need to edit the boot.ini file on your master hard drive, so you can dual boot.

See this thread HERE and let us know if it helps.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

 

[Crowbait]

Sorry I should have stated...these drives are SATA's and are on channels 0 and 1 (or on the MoBo sata1 and sata2)

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Ah, I didn`t know you meant sata drives. I have changed your thread title to reflect this and hopefully, someone will know if it`s possible or not.

Regards Howard

 

[Crowbait]

Awh yah...sorry about the post header Howard and thanks for looking after me...LOL

 

[Spectralist]

I don't know if it's what you're looking for but some BIOS's have a quick boot menu, to choose which drive to boot from without having to go all the way into the bios. Rather then hitting del during boot to enter the bios options you can hit a different key(there doesn't seem to be a standard key for it). In some it's F1, F8, and i've heard of F12 too.

You might wanna check your motherboard's manual for it. Or if you are lucky it might say it on the POST screen(one of mine does, it says "Hit del to enter bios, Hit F8 to enter boot menu" or something like that).