Two Drives, dual boot Vista/Vista? bootmenu?

R

robertpri

Member
I have done this many times with XP Pro. Two entirely different hard drives.

Make a dynamic file by file copy of C to D, then configure the boot menu to boot to either one.

So, if C should die, boot to identical D. Has saved me and business clents many times.

But alas, whatever is used as bootini in Vista seems a bit more difficult.

If I have two identical hard drives with the same vista OS, how do I configure the bootini menu to boot to either one?

many thanks
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Asus G50Vt plus two XP shop machines used for trouble-shooting client problems
Many thanks! I have Partition Magic 9 which claims to have a boot manager option, and it does, but its' designed to create a new partition and then install a new os.

A great many steps,and not really what I want

thanks again
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Asus G50Vt plus two XP shop machines used for trouble-shooting client problems

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dwarf Dwf/11/2012 r09/2013
    CPU
    Intel Core-i5-3570K 4-core @ 3.4GHz (Ivy Bridge) (OC 4.2GHz)
    Motherboard
    ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M
    Memory
    4 x 4GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B (16GB)
    Graphics Card(s)
    MSI GeForce GTX770 Gaming OC 2GB
    Sound Card
    Realtek High Definition on board solution (ALC 898)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ViewSonic VA1912w Widescreen
    Screen Resolution
    1440x900
    Hard Drives
    OCZ Agility 3 120GB SATA III x2 (RAID 0)
    Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA II x2
    Hitachi HDS721010CLA332 1TB SATA II
    Iomega 1.5TB Ext USB 2.0
    WD 2.0TB Ext USB 3.0
    PSU
    XFX Pro Series 850W Semi-Modular
    Case
    Gigabyte IF233
    Cooling
    1 x 120mm Front Inlet 1 x 120mm Rear Exhaust
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 (USB)
    Mouse
    Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000 for Business (USB)
    Internet Speed
    NetGear DG834Gv3 ADSL Modem/Router (Ethernet) ~4.0 Mb/s (O2)
    Other Info
    Optical Drive: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 SATA Bluray
    Lexmark S305 Printer/Scanner/Copier (USB)
    WEI Score: 8.1/8.1/8.5/8.5/8.25
    Asus Eee PC 1011PX Netbook (Windows 7 x86 Starter)
You could just do the following, buy motherboards/pci card that support raid,(they arnt that expensive) and set up a RAID 1 drive system. Since the driver is in hardware you don't take a CPU performance hit.
Its wonderful and I have used it on many client machines.

Definition:
[FONT=tahoma,arial,helvetica,sansserif] RAID-1 [/FONT]
[FONT=tahoma,arial,helvetica,sansserif] RAID-1 provides data redundancy by writing the same information to two or more drives. The performance of a level 1 array tends to be faster on reads and slower on writes compared to a single drive configuration. However, if either drive fails in a level-1 array, no data is lost. This RAID level is commonly referred to as Mirroring. [/FONT]
Click to expand...
The best part is instead of just being able to bring the machine online from a hard drive crash, all of the clients data is actually backed up automatically on the second disk, so they have no interruption of business.

All you need to do is remove the broken drive place in a new one and the hardware automatically moves the clients data onto the new drive. And you can do this while the client is using the machine.
>BAM< your back up and running with a live 100% backup.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell vostro 1500
    CPU
    core duo 1.6
    Memory
    4gb + 1gb turbocache
    Graphics Card(s)
    8600m GT 256mb
    Sound Card
    Onboard Sigmatel
    Screen Resolution
    1280x800
I have done RAID before, but this particular question was about my single hard drive laptop. I downloaded BCD as recommended from Falvius below.

I ran it and expected it to become my bootup screen menu, but it just keeps opening with the standard MS log on.

I might be doing something wrong. After you spend hours getting vista to work, one's mind is a bit frayed.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Asus G50Vt plus two XP shop machines used for trouble-shooting client problems
Flavius said:
To configure bootmgr in Vista is command bcdedit (command bcdedit /? display all options of these command) but simply and better way is to use EasyBCD ->Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies
Click to expand...

Many many thanks! Others have mentioned BCD and I also thank them!

It was so simple that I worried about it. I've tried other methods including Acronis and Partition Manager, but they either failed or did not work well.

Easy BCD was a couple of clicks, it found the two bootable drives, and now lists them on every boot. Both the laptop and backup drive boot and work perfectly!

Many thanks!
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Asus G50Vt plus two XP shop machines used for trouble-shooting client problems
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