Wiping a Drive and installing Windows??

AFK_Matrix · 16 Jan 2006 at 12:36

Hi,

I have a maxtor 250GB drive in my machine at present. But i have a new segate 300GB and a Raptor for my new system. Now what i want to do is put windows on the raptor, which i can easily do. Now what i want to do with the maxtor is to delete the partions, format it. So i was thinking i would setup the raptor then attach the maxtor. Then in windows i would delete the partitions and format it in the disk management program. The only problem i can see with this is that the maxtor will have a copy of xp on so will i get a dual boot screen come up? If i do get a dual boot screen how do i know which windows to pick?

Therefore is there another way to do this?

MeatLoaf · 16 Jan 2006 at 12:47

Install just the raptor first and put windows on it, then after put the maxtor in a format it then in windows.

OR

Connect both before setting up windows and i think you get an option during setup to delete/create an format partitions.

|Ric| · 16 Jan 2006 at 13:09

If you remove the maxtor and install on the raptor, when you plug the maxtor in at the same time you will not get a selection screen asking you which windows to boot

The pc will just boot from the hard drive that is highest in the boot order in the bios
A screen to select which OS to load will only occur if you fiddle with the boot.ini AKAIK. Don't worry it should just ignore the other windows (though just be careful you aren't booting from IDE first)

I also don't see the problem because if its boots the wrong one, reboot and select the other one! surely you can tell the difference between a clean install and your old one. Plus just load up disk manager and select the maxtor (which is even a different size)

Nothing to worry about, this is a non-issue

|Ric| · 16 Jan 2006 at 13:12

One other point is that whenever I have used Norton Ghost to clone hard drives it always tells you not to reboot with two primary disks in (or something to that effect, i.e. not 2 copies of the OS on different disks)
I am not sure what this is meant to prevent, I have ignored this advice many times and never had a problem so perhaps someone could tell you what it is trying to prevent