toggle power switch for seperate OS drives

[gRaYfOxX]

I just ordered all new parts to build a new comp but now i want to dual boot XP pro 32-bit and Vista ultimate 64-bit and have both as drive C: when running. I know that you can't have both as the same drive letter at the same time so i thought that maybe I could put toggle switches for the power connectors of the XP drive and for the raid 0 array for Vista on the front of the case. Will having SATA drives plugged into my board unpowered like this damage the drives or raid array? I've build probably 15 or so computers in the last 10 years for myself and others but never have dual booted any of them.

 

[GJSNeptune]

Who told you that you can't have them be the same drive letter? Whichever OS you boot into will behave as the C: drive.

Well, I dual boot from the same hard drive, and that's how it is for me. I'm pretty sure it's true for separate HDDs as well, but hopefully someone can confirm/bust it.

 

[DeaconFrost]

The days of dual-booting are pretty much in the past. Get a copy of VirtualBox and run XP in a VM. On today's hardware, it runs at near-native speed, and is much simpler than dual-booting.

 

[Wolf-R1]

The days of dual-booting are pretty much in the past. Get a copy of VirtualBox and run XP in a VM. On today's hardware, it runs at near-native speed, and is much simpler than dual-booting.

Only if you don't expect to run 3D games that don't run well or at all in Vista but were written for XP.

 

[Zepher]

I sometimes wish MS would have bought AmigaOS and incorporate some of the features from the Amiga.

you could get a pair of removable drive bays, the ones with the key (which I believe most of them have keys), and then just turn the key to lock the drive you want to use.

 

[Catweazle]

Who told you that you can't have them be the same drive letter? Whichever OS you boot into will behave as the C: drive.

Well, I dual boot from the same hard drive, and that's how it is for me. I'm pretty sure it's true for separate HDDs as well, but hopefully someone can confirm/bust it.

Quite definitely correct. Drive letter allocations under Windows aren't necessarily reflective of the drive identification allocations served up by BIOS. I've had XP and Vista dual-booting with each identifying its respective drive/partition as C:

 

[gRaYfOxX]

thanks for the responses guys, I'll try installing XP first and see if they can both be C: when each OS is running. my case will have 2 120mm fans cooling the drives so the removable drive bay option is not good for me. Having an OS not be C: is not good because some programs and games install into C: by default which can make things messy and frustrating.

 

[Monkey God]

+1
The C drives will remain C drives in their respective OS's
(running XP and Vista 64)

 

[DeaconFrost]

Only if you don't expect to run 3D games that don't run well or at all in Vista but were written for XP.

It's pretty much to the point where, if a game is too old to run in Vista, it doesn't need 3D accelerating. I've been able to run older games like Age of Empires II and the Star Wars spin-off in a VM with no issues.