Dual Boot without Dual Install

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DroopyPawn
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2005/12/10 18:54:46 (permalink)

Dual Boot without Dual Install

I have a good working installation of Windows XP Pro for my business. I also like the XP installation I have on another hard drive for Sonar. I've been swapping drives with removable drive bays for a few years. I recently decided to lose the removeable bays because they were causing issues.

So if I use PartitionMagic to resize these installations to 40gb each, then make a DriveImage copy of my Sonar drive, then install it on a 2nd partition on my business drive, what do I need to do to make it a dual boot system so that I can choose which partition I want to load when my system starts? I assume I just need to add a line to boot.ini but I'm not sure what it should say.

Alternately, what if I just set up a 2nd user account on my business drive for just Sonar stuff? Will it still load all the other drivers? And even if it does, is that really a problem? I have Sonar installed on my business drive too, I just don't use it for my "real" recording projects. Just quick stuff.

How do you guys handle this? Phyisically changing drives by pulling them off the IDE cable is going to irritate me at some point.

Gary Shepherd
www.16tracks.com
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    juca
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    RE: Dual Boot without Dual Install 2005/12/10 19:07:56 (permalink)
    Hi Gary:
    I have two WinXP installs with dual boot option. The two OS are in the same drive, but at different partitions (this is very important, because if you install in the same partition the two OS will make confusion with files of both).
    For your orientation, I post my boot.ini content:

    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Trilha Studio" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Juca Nascimento"=optin /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut

    The text in inside the cotes can to be edited at your taste for to reflect your system of work.
    I hope this help.
    Greetings.

    ****** Juca Nascimento ******
    Keyboards/Composer/Arranger
    #2
    tomek
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    RE: Dual Boot without Dual Install 2005/12/10 19:22:14 (permalink)
    Alternately, what if I just set up a 2nd user account on my business drive for just Sonar stuff? Will it still load all the other drivers? And even if it does, is that really a problem? I have Sonar installed on my business drive too, I just don't use it for my "real" recording projects. Just quick stuff.

    I wouldn't bother w/ that..
    Separate boot partitions are the way to go.

    One important thing to remeber:

    The partition you are imaging to,
    must be identical in size to the partition you are imaging from.
    Otherwise you may run into problems.
    Tomek.



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    Trankonia
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    RE: Dual Boot without Dual Install 2005/12/10 22:07:33 (permalink)
    While dual boot is certainly viable, and I would as suggested, place them on separate partitions. Another great option is to use VMWare to run multiple OS's. It is an excellent way to keep things isolated.

    It does take a reasonable system with at least 1.5 gig of ram. But what's nice about it is that you can easily zip up different instances and back the whole Virtual machine as one Unit. That way, whenever you have a certain system setup that you want, you can save it out to DVd completely intact.

    I would probably use the VMWare instance for the business and place Sonar on the host if this approach is at all appealing to you.

    Regards,

    Trankonia

    post edited by Trankonia - 2005/12/10 22:08:12
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