Dual Booting Vista....a couple of noob style questions

Entai · 4 Dec 2006 at 09:48

Hi all,

I would like to try out Vista, but in case there are any problems I would like to dual boot, so keeping my existing XP setup intact.

At the moment I have Xp Pro (32bit) on two 74Gb Raptors in a raid setup.

I am proposing to install Vista Ultimate (64 Bit) onto a single fresh hard disk (80Gb Hitachi).

Basically what do I need to do to make sure that Vista installs OK onto it's disk without damaging the raid setup, and most importantly still being able to see the raid set when Vista is running, as I have all the Vista drivers for my devices in a folder on the raid set.

modo77 · 4 Dec 2006 at 11:25

Don't think you can dual boot 32bit xp with 64bit vista, well at least when I tried it I couldn't. The problem was it wouldn't let the 64bit install run from within xp.

I guess you could probably just do the install from boot instead of xp, but I didn't give this a try.

ic1male · 4 Dec 2006 at 12:01

Firstly, to install Vista x64, boot from the DVD and run the installation from there. From my experience of it, it won't see the RAID drives during installation and hence it will install the boot loader on your non-RAID drive. But it will detect that there is an XP version already installed. Weird! And you'll be able to use the RAID drives from within Vista - just not during setup. Doubly weird!

All this is based on my experience with an Asus nForce 4 Ultra mobo.

Entai · 4 Dec 2006 at 12:21

ic1male said:
Firstly, to install Vista x64, boot from the DVD and run the installation from there. From my experience of it, it won't see the RAID drives during installation and hence it will install the boot loader on your non-RAID drive. But it will detect that there is an XP version already installed. Weird! And you'll be able to use the RAID drives from within Vista - just not during setup. Doubly weird!

All this is based on my experience with an Asus nForce 4 Ultra mobo.

That sounds like what I am after, especially as I have a DFI Ultra-D Nforce 4, so should, in theory, get similar results.

I guess lets bite the bullet and try, will report back later.

cheers for the help guys