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KiraYuki

Okay so I want to link up two hard drives I have,

I want a fresh start on both so I'm going to back up all my music and shit onto my external hard drive.

So I would make a master and slave drive...

I want to have both vista and windows 7 os's installed.
How could I do that, would I have to partition the master and do it that way and use the slave as storage...or would I have to have 1 hard drive for vista and one for w7? How would I partition the drive to install both anyways? (would I have to instal one then use a program to partition the other? but then how would I install the OS on the other half?...

I have 2 hard drives, one that isn't isntalled yet but it was from my old computer, i never erased things off it... it should still have xp OS on it and stuff, how would I format that .... guah soo confusing... It's not so much I don't understand it but its that I can't compute what to do first and how to do it properly .... >_< thankies!

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Abubakr

I'm pretty sure if you partion the first hard drive you can install both Vista and Windows 7. For formatting the other hard drive, just right click on it in My Computer and click format. Since you're going to be runnning an OS on the other hard drive, the secondary one won't be in use and it should let you format.

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Ronin

Uhm, no.
90% [edit: not really clear at all, what do you mean with external?] no, if you want to be more sure:
Start>run>"dxdiag">"[Return]">Save all information>open Dxdiag.txt>post

Other than that:
You would partition one disk into at least two partitions if you want to install 2 different operating systems on it.

You can only install one OS in one partition, so each partition you make, can be used to install an OS into it any time you want (hence becoming a "system partition").

It is highly recommended to only install windows into the partition you assign the letter C too; That has you running into possible issues, if you want to install 2 windows versions on your system.

Use C for the one you are more likely to end up using regularely.

About master/slave biz:
A) Master and Slave devices only are for IDE hard-drives, which are very old tech by now, it's likely that you don't have those at all.

If you have one removable disk and one HD in the tower, the removable can be only be connected via
- USB [no master or slave disks exist]
- Firewire [no master or slave disks exist]
- eSATA [no master or slave disks exist]
- IDE connected docking station (You would know; To make the drive more hot plug compatible (meaning avoiding your box randomly refusing to boot half of the time), you'd better not set it to the same IDE Controller as the Disk that you have your system partitions on though, lol.)

In any case if at any time your setup has worked, do not mess it up and it will continue to do so.

B) It has only something to do with how the HW bus addresses the Hard disks, it's completely irrelevant to concerns about partitions or what OS you use; Just make sure that the Disk the OS's should be put on is master (I don't know anymore if this even matters though and I am leaning towards the opinion that it does not, but I can't really remember this from the years back in time).

@Old data from a different system:
Assuming it's both IDE-drives and you hook both onto one cable, just hook the one on master, where you want to put the OS's on.
(The cable has a master and a slave tag on it, the not completely ancient drives configure themselves automatically to the position they are connected at, but if they are, you hvae to set jumpers, according to the documentation of the drives, which you hopefully have at hand.)
Swaping HD's between ports they are plugged in leaving alone other PC's is likely to give you issues.

Any HD has a bootrecord in it, that identifies it and helps the system handling it correctly when booting up.
This bootrecord stores informations of where it belongs;
If it gets placed in another system without formating it, this causes confusions, up to the point where the drive hinders the box from booting at all, even after you removed the disk completely, because the bootrecord of other disks get messed up too.

Getting back the data on the disks in this case is a real bother.

If you do not connect them via one cable:
Just plug them in with a cable that fits the connectors, never use 2 different power source connectors, in case the HD features to different power-plugs, if one is IDE, just put it on master, look if there are any jumpers to set and leave the slave position free.

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KiraYuki

I forgot that that was only for older drives...yeah i have sata stuff (all 2008~ new parts)

anyways, I was also wondering ... if I were to put my games ( like regular pc games not online or anything... such as devil may cry 4 etc...) On the storage (second) hard drive...would I be able to play it on either OS's? like access it?

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Ronin

Technically: Some you might run (as in open up, the errors and glitches that might appear are really not predictable, but be ready for lots), others just won't.

Practically: The registry has replaced *.ini files, since windows 3.11. You run a pretty decent chance of making your both systems slow and unstable, by forcing your way around that. The longer you do it the more likely it is for you to run into BSOD's for no end until windows won't open anymore.

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KiraYuki

i see... o.o ... wait what? What am I forcing around what? How is it slowing what system down? HUH!? srry a little to complex for me to understand. o.o

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Ronin

Just don't do it.

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