Installing Win 7 to another drive within Win

[FalconSS]

Hello,
I am currently running The Windows 7 Beta and I love it, but with the end date approaching fast I was wondering if there is any way to install Win7 RC to an empty drive while inside windows. The reason for this is my DVD-burner was just shot so All I have is a DVD drive and also to access data I had made in beta. I lost my flash drives because I moved and the only one I found is only 2Gb. I have a spare 120 hooked up inside my already crazy Hard drive setup. This is my current Drive Config:

1x DVD-rom/ CDR

1x80gb SATA ---> Windows XP MCE 2005
1x80gb SATA ---> Data Drive

1x160gb IDE ----> Windows7 Beta

1x120gb IDE -----> empty, ready for Windows7 RC IDE 1 Master
1x120gb IDE -----> Not hooked up yet but in case(will be for data), IDE 2 Slave

I'm a bit worried about hooking up the other 120gb drive because of power concerns. Because I only have an Antec truepower 550 and an HIS ATI 3850 Heavily Overclocked, the rest of my comp is in my sig. do'nt worry about the "linux" drive, I haven't had tha in there for years.

[GORANKAR]

nevermind

[Sonicks]

My setup was like this:

1xHDD with Win7 RC x86
1xHDD that was empty
1xHDD with my Documents folder.

I wanted to try out the x64 RC version (without formatting my x86 one) so I downloaded the ISO, extracted that to my Documents drive, ran the installer, and chose the emtpy HDD to install to. It worked just fine. Setup begins as usual, then restarts the computer and continues from there. No need to use a USB stick.

So in short, yes it is possible.

[FalconSS]

How did you extract the ISO?

[Sonicks]

With WinRAR.

[FalconSS]

ok, I have it extracted... What part of the setup does it ask about where to install it to? I don't want to overwrite my existing installation,,

also: When I installed Win7 Beta from a CD, win7 changed thr drive letter of itself to C:, even though the Drive letter Of the drive within XP is Z:, that means I can explore my windows 7 beta files from with XP. Will Win7 Release Candidate set its drive letter to C as well?

[Sonicks]

When you get start the setup, just choose the "Custom" option, not the upgrade option. That way you leave your current installation intact.

Also, Windows will always set the system drive to C: when you boot into it. For instance, you boot into your XP partition, your XP one will be C:. and if you boot into yout Win7 Beta, that one will be C: as well. You just have to be really careful when you choose what drive to install it to to make sure it is the one you want.