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

"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.

install xp onn first HDD. then install on seciond hard drive. window creates
dual boot menu.
pretty easy.

"Uncle John" wrote:

> 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
>
>
>

"Uncle John" wrote:
> 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


Using Windows XP's built-in multi-boot manager would be easier.
The only thing you have to do is see that another entry is added in
the C:\boot.ini file. That can be done automatically when the 2nd
OS is installed, via one of the tabs in msconfig, or manually using
Notepad. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base for the syntax of
boot.ini . The advantage of using the boot manager to multi-boot
is that you can put multiple copies of the OS on a hard drive and
be able to select which one gets loaded. With the method of
adjusting the BIOS's HD boot order, you can only select which
HD does the booting.

*TimDaniels*

Would the process below be a good idea if I modified it and put 2 IDENTICAL
OS's on separate HD's in case one of the hard drives crashes? Along those
lines, I just bought a Dell computer without a floppy drive. Am I in
trouble? I only hear talk about creating an ASR (if I am remembering the
acronym correctly) disk on floppy to restore the system. I can't think of
too many other reasons to have a floppy drive these days. I will have a SONY
USB2.0 External DVD/CD burner. I think I want to make a disk image and if
the computer gets out of whack, wipe the disk clean and reload the image. Is
there a good primer on how to set up XP on a computer and be smart about it
from the start? I was thinking of partitioning the 2nd HD (300GB) and
copying the image of the 1st HD (the one with all the programs and OS) there.
Sorry if I have gotten way off topic.

"Dixonian69" wrote:

> install xp onn first HDD. then install on seciond hard drive. window creates
> dual boot menu.
> pretty easy.
>
> "Uncle John" wrote:
>
> > 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
> >
> >
> >

"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
>

Why do I have this feeling that someday, somewhere, somehow you're gonna
mess this up

Seems just a little too "Rube Goldberg" for me. But hey, if it works for
ya, so be it. It does sound like it may be specific to your mobo, maybe
even BIOS firmware version.

Personally, I bought Bootit NG 5-6 year ago for $30, have received every
upgrade since then for NOTHING. I can boot across HDs, partition, hide
them, and setup as many complex configurations I like, with a lot less
effort. Plus manage partitions and backup/restore image copies without
having to resort to additional software.

But again, whatever works and satisfies YOU is all that counts.

Jim


> Ainsi dit. ansi soit!-
> Uncle John
>
>

Yes that is the way I do it.

Some posters have missed the fact the dual boot installed but windows
depends on writing a special boot.in to ONE disk. if that disk fails the
second boot may also fail. Moreover live backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot
be done because both the disks will be in service

--
Uncle John
"kkf718" <kkf718@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BBD31150-8040-4285-A859-B411A6E0649E@microsoft.com...
> Would the process below be a good idea if I modified it and put 2
> IDENTICAL
> OS's on separate HD's in case one of the hard drives crashes? Along those
> lines, I just bought a Dell computer without a floppy drive. Am I in
> trouble? I only hear talk about creating an ASR (if I am remembering the
> acronym correctly) disk on floppy to restore the system. I can't think
> of
> too many other reasons to have a floppy drive these days. I will have a
> SONY
> USB2.0 External DVD/CD burner. I think I want to make a disk image and if
> the computer gets out of whack, wipe the disk clean and reload the image.
> Is
> there a good primer on how to set up XP on a computer and be smart about
> it
> from the start? I was thinking of partitioning the 2nd HD (300GB) and
> copying the image of the 1st HD (the one with all the programs and OS)
> there.
> Sorry if I have gotten way off topic.
>
> "Dixonian69" wrote:
>
>> install xp onn first HDD. then install on seciond hard drive. window
>> creates
>> dual boot menu.
>> pretty easy.
>>
>> "Uncle John" wrote:
>>
>> > 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
>> >
>> >
>> >

The dual boot installed but windows depends on writing a special boot.ini to
ONE disk. if that disk fails the second boot may also fail. Moreover live
backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both the disks will be
in service



--
Uncle John
"Pegasus (MVP)" <I.can@fly.com> wrote in message
news:%23mVywxS9FHA.600@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
>
> "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.
>
>

The dual boot installed but windows depends on writing a special boot.ini to
ONE disk. if that disk fails the second boot may also fail. Moreover live
backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both the disks will be
in service



--
Uncle John
"Dixonian69" <Dixonian69@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A48AAFB0-9CA9-4106-8C56-CA0FE3E63153@microsoft.com...
> install xp onn first HDD. then install on seciond hard drive. window
> creates
> dual boot menu.
> pretty easy.
>
> "Uncle John" wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>

The dual boot installed but windows depends on writing a special boot.ini to
ONE disk. if that disk fails the second boot may also fail. Moreover live
backup from disk 1 to disk 2 cannot be done because both the disks will be
in service

--
Uncle John
"Timothy Daniels" <TDaniels@NoSpamDot.com> wrote in message
news:gO-dneQPBpmljRDenZ2dnUVZ_s6dnZ2d@comcast.com...
> "Uncle John" wrote:
>> 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
>
>
> Using Windows XP's built-in multi-boot manager would be easier.
> The only thing you have to do is see that another entry is added in
> the C:\boot.ini file. That can be done automatically when the 2nd
> OS is installed, via one of the tabs in msconfig, or manually using
> Notepad. See the Microsoft Knowledge Base for the syntax of
> boot.ini . The advantage of using the boot manager to multi-boot
> is that you can put multiple copies of the OS on a hard drive and
> be able to select which one gets loaded. With the method of
> adjusting the BIOS's HD boot order, you can only select which
> HD does the booting.
>
> *TimDaniels*