Dual botting and wiping of previouse OS drive questions.

TheSwede

TheSwede

TheSwede

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I done dual booting before but on two different drives, now I am thinking about partitioning up 2 320GB HD's in a Raid 1 set up, what I am not so sure of is when I do the first installation, in this case XP Pro, will I be able to partition up the drive before the installation starts or will I have to do that after the installation been done? If I am not mistaken you should start with the oldest OS first when doing a dual booting, right?

Also, would you advice against using the same drive for 2 OS, or is that ok? I am just going to have the XP available if I encounter a game that I might not be able to play in my main OS, which is going to be Win7. Any other programs I have is running fine in Win7 so it will only be for the odd game.

Secondly, this time I am going to disconnect all my other HDD's when I do the installation of my OS, since last time I had them on and seem like I got some system files on a drive where they weren't suppose to go. Anyway, the question I have is once I got my new dual boot up and running, can I then add the HDD's that I have my old OS on in a Hot Swap bay and wipe the HD clean without in creating a conflict (since there is an OS on it and not sure if it will try and start when connected to an already running OS or not? Actually, to add to this, one of my present drives, without an OS on, is showing as an Active drive in the Computer Management screen, if that drive would be inserted in a Hot Swap bay later, would it still come up as an Active drive, even if it is like I just switched on an external drive?). Hopefully that makes sense! :o

Lastly, what kind of software would you recommend using when wiping the disc's, since I want to make sure it been properly cleaned so no one can get to any data that has been on them, i.e. online banking etc.

As always, any advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated! :D
 
Sorry for shameful bump, but maybe someone in the "night crew" can give me some advice/suggestions about the above? :o
 
Disconnect all drives except the raid 1 320gb array, load up first OS and format half the drive using the built in utility, install first OS.

Install second os in the other half, then once all install, connect up all the other drives.

Note: if you are installing vista + xp, install xp first as vista's BCD will pick it up and give you a menu no problem, but XP is too old and won't be able to. Vista/7 are both clever enough to detect each other so it doesnt matter if thats the direction you are headed.

The windows format utility is more than enough for your average user, especially once you install back over the top of the data, plus the creation of the raid array will further increase the "deleted'ness".

If you really really want to waste a load of time writing zero's to the drive, then just download hiren and use one of the utilities on there :)
 
Thank you for your reply Sp00n!

I am going do dual boot XP and Win 7 so guessing it will be the same way as Xp / Vista and I'll do XP first.

The 2 320GB HD's has not been used in my system before, so the previous OS is on other HD's, but I might just download hiren and check that one out.

Once again, thanks for your reply! :)
 
toon_mad said:
Looks at thread title, "Dual botting"! :p
Click to expand...

bah humbug! Kanske jag skulle ha skrivit det på svenska istället!? ;) :p What can I say.. English is not my first language! Besides, I am pretty sure you know what I was referring to anyway, but then again, maybe that's why I didn't get any replies, no one know what botting was! :eek: :p
 
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