Dual boot Windows using two separate SS Drives

Brian G

Brian G

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I am currently running W7 and I have no intention of changing.
However I'd like to also install W10.
My motherboard has a slot for an M2 SSD, currently unoccupied.
My question is, can I install W10 onto an M2 SSD and dual boot it, sharing the OS between W7 on my current SSD and W10 on the M2 SSD?
 
Dual boot from two separate drives is possible.
The only thing you will need to do on each start up though is change the boot order depending upon what OS you want to use.

You can also dual boot from a single drive. This gives you the flexibility to access personal files through either OS as they are both NTFS file systems should you want to
 
Great.
Thanks very much.
I'm assuming selecting the boot order will mean accessing the BIOS? a bit messy.
I've been tracking the prices of the M2 SSD's and now they are becoming more affordable I thought I'd try one.
Maybe I'll just get a larger M2 and dual boot from that, there's less fiddling about involved.

One further question.
Can I run my installed programs from where they are located, or do I have to install one set for each OS?
 
Brian G said:
I'm assuming selecting the boot order will mean accessing the BIOS? a bit messy.
Click to expand...

Many MoBos have the option to change boot order without opening the full bios, often just hitting F12 while booting with give you a drive selection to scroll through. You could install a separate boot manager that will offer boot options automatically - Linux has done this for years, and IIRC there's an upper limit for the maximum number of OSs that can be booted from a single HDD. My 'experimental' base unit has a couple of flavours of Linux + W10 available.

Generally you will need to install for each OS.
 
If your going to dual boot from 2 hard drives, on some mobos you will have to go into the bios and enable legacy boot. If not the win 10 installation may hijack the EUFI and only allow booting to win 10. Only a possibility but something to be aware of. Could save a lot of head scratching.
 
I seem to remember from my own 7-10 dual boot system that if Win 7 is the primary option then it'll give you 10 seconds (via an onscreen prompt) to change to Win 10 during start up. If Win 10 is the primary option then it sails through without offering the alternate system.
 
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Thanks all for the replies, all very helpful.
I think I'm going to go with a single M2 SSD and dual boot from that.
W7 will remain my main OS for the forseeable future, so I'll take the 10 second W10 option as required.
All I need to do now is sort out a suitable M2 SSD.
 
I think you may run into problems trying to dual boot Win 10 and Win 7 especially if you have a dual BIOS.

This is because Win 10 uses an EFI partition of 512MB to boot from and Win 7 uses a partition of 100MB to boot from and one may overwrite the other.

Quite definitely you need to use 2 different drives - 1 for each OS - to avoid problems.
 
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Canon Bob said:
I seem to remember from my own 7-10 dual boot system that if Win 7 is the primary option then it'll give you 10 seconds (via an onscreen prompt) to change to Win 10 during start up. If Win 10 is the primary option then it sails through without offering the alternate system.
Click to expand...

I have a couple of SSDs, one with Win7 and one with Win10. I always get the onscreen selection on booting (I think the ten seconds can altered as a default), with the default boot being the last one used.
 
StephenM said:
I have a couple of SSDs, one with Win7 and one with Win10. I always get the onscreen selection on booting (I think the ten seconds can altered as a default), with the default boot being the last one used.
Click to expand...
OK. Thank you for that.
I was a little uncertain if this was possible, since effectively you need to have two "C" drives to boot from and I didn't know how they would need to be configured.
Having two drives would be nicer, since I can keep my existing SSD with W7 intact and just add the new M2 drive with the new OS.
Back to plan A then...
 
Brian G said:
I was a little uncertain if this was possible, since effectively you need to have two "C" drives to boot from and I didn't know how they would need to be configured.
Click to expand...

It is only "C drive" in the system that has booted....you can configure the drive letters individually for each system (and the boot drive can have another letter if you so wish)
 
You do need a boot manager, which I think Windows will supply on instalation (possibly if it detects another OS - it's a while since I set up the system). On boot, the active OS is drive C and the inactive drive B (on my system).

I think I have the option to add other operating systems.

For what it's worth, as well as being able to boot into either Win10 or Win7, I also run Win7 in a virtual machine when Win10 is the active OS - I have both going simultaneously at the moment.
 
Brian G said:
One further question.
Can I run my installed programs from where they are located, or do I have to install one set for each OS?
Click to expand...
Programs would generally have to be installed twice, once for each OS. Some applications are more self-contained than others, so you might get away with running them from the W7 location under W10, but results will be unpredictable. If your software is available as a Portable App, as many free applications are, you may be able to run the portable version from one place under both: https://portableapps.com/

As Stephen suggests, a VM could be a good solution. I use this to run Windows and Linux on the same machine, and occasionally different versions of Windows. You can also make Windows 10 work more like Windows 7 by adding something like Classic Shell/Open-Shell.
 
Hmm...
This is obviously a little more complicated than I thought and your answers have certainly provided food for thought - thanks to all who have responded.
I'm completely happy running W7 at the moment, and I'm not especially bothered by the withdrawal of support next year, provided it is still supported by AV and utility programs, at least for a while.
I have had mixed experiences with W10, which make me a little reluctant to swap completely at present, but the ability to run the two systems in parallel would give me the opportunity to make comparisons.
I think the next step will be for me to obtain a suitable M2 drive.
 
What about running Win10 in a virtual machine? You could then see what you think of it, and if necessary, reserve Win10 for internet stuff and do useful things (:))on Win7? Iuse VirtualBox (free) and Microsoft do make a file suitable for VirtualBox to load Win10 from also freely - although it has an expiry date which you should be able to avoid (they tell you how, or used to).
 
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