How can you put a second different Operating System on a second hard drive Original OS is Vista Premium 32. Second OS to be XP Pro. Both hard drives are WD SATA and second one is not installed yet.?

Answer 1

golden rule for this is " install xp first "

however if your using 2 separate drives you may be lucky

1... unplug your vista drive.. don't remove it just unplug it

2... rig up the new drive.. original drive should be connected to "sata 0" on the motherboard so connect your new drive to "sata 1"

3... with vista drive UNPLUGGED (both cables) and xp drive plugged in (both cables) go ahead and install xp using the xp disc

4 once xp is installed REplug your vista drive and boot the computer

if all has gone well it should ask you which OS you want to load

some bios setting may need to be changed so you may have to read your motherboard manual to see what they are..

hope this helps

Thank you for your answer. I apologize for not having the opportunity to make it happen yet but, I will get back home this Thursday. Please let me know if after booting the computer and the selection of the hard drive needed, the other hard drive will it still spin even it is not used ? I am asking this because I would like to minimize hard drives ware & tare as much as is possible. Installing a selector toggle switch on the hard drives power wires could be a suitable option ? Please let me know what do you think about it, trying to extending the hard drives life. Thank you for your help.