Best Dual Boot Suggestions

[scottvsaunders]

Hi,
I am looking at dual booting my system and reinstalling everything from scratch. What I want to do is have Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows XP installed but I dont know where.

I have 3 hard drives on my machine which are as follows

1 x SATA 320GB
1 x SATA 160GB
1 x IDE 120

Now, is it best to install both versions on Windows on the same hard drive but use partitions, have another hard drive to installing programs that both OS's can share and the final drive for storage or am I way off the mark?

I read on the net about having partitions is the best way but I am not so sure, can anyone suggest a good set up for me?

Thanks

 

[PC eye]

I previously ran 4 HDs two 250gb ide models and the 2 500gb sata drives used on the current build. The last build saw the RC1 beta release of Vista multibooting with both XP Home and Pro editions with XP Pro as the default OS. Each were on their own drive seeing a single primary then.

The fourth drive was strictly used as a 500gb storage drive with XP Pro on the first 500gb sata. That had been on the second ide drive until Vista refused to install to a second primary created. Originally that build only saw the two ide drives until RC1 became available as well as a need for more storage space.

The first thing to note about dual booting the two versions will be regarding the system restore points in the new version. If you set up a dual boot with XP, 2000, Server 2003 and boot into one of the older versions that will cancel out Vista's restore points immediately. One option for avoiding that is to install each separately with the other version's drive unplugged as stand alone installations.

One other big word of advice is not to custom install programs on a separate drive from the OS. Any change in drive layouts or reinstallation of Windows will mean starting all over fresh again. It's far better to install each program on the OS drive and utilize the third for storage and backing files up. The 320gb sata would be seen as the best for a storage/backup device there with XP on the 120gb ide model.