"Uncle John" <unclejohn@uselesnospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23Jlzq3Q9FHA.1276@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> For those interested in dual booting from different or twin identical OS I
> have happened on the following neat way of doing it:
>
> 1 Two disks master and slave, about same size. In my case SATA 74 GB
> Westinghouse Raptor
>
> 2 Windows XP Pro installed with all apps on Master=Disk 0
> 3 In Windows use CasperXP to diskcopy Disk 1 to Disk 2 (Windows 1 = Bios
0)
> 4 Reboot, set the bios with Slave=Disk 0 as first had disk boot priority,
> set Boot from CD as the first general boot device
> 5a Leave the Windows CD in the Optical Drive and reboot take care not to
> touch a key while rebooting or the CD will be fired up, the PC will boot
> into the master Disk
> 5b Take the CD out and Reboot. The PC will boot into the slave disk
> 6 The slave disk in my case for backup is updated nightly by Casper XP
> scheduled copy (System Restore has to be disabled on the slave to be able
to
> diskcopy properly.
>
> The behaviour of being able to select which hard disk will may be specific
> to my Gigabyte motherboard and Award bios, but the system will work, ;less
> sweetly simply but switching the hard disk boot priority in the bios
before
> booting
>
> Ainsi dit. ansi soit!-
> Uncle John
>
>

Why should I go to the trouble of modifying the BIOS each time I
wish to boot to my other OS if I can have an OS selector in a boot
menu provided by a boot loader, e.g. XOSL (which, incidentally,
is free)? Seems to be a step backwards.