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Thread: HDD Partitioning..

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    Pseudo-Mad Scientist Whiternoise's Avatar
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    HDD Partitioning..

    Just wondering if it's possible to have an OS installer on a hard drive partition and then boot from it and install to another partition?

    I'm asking because i'd otherwise need a DVD writer to burn the disc image and then boot from the DVD.

    Also.. this is with regards to dual booting - i've got an 80gb drive with XP on it, if i install another OS (say linux or whatever) on my other 250gb drive, will it harm the XP installation?

    Thanks!

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: HDD Partitioning..

    Quote Originally Posted by Whiternoise View Post
    Just wondering if it's possible to have an OS installer on a hard drive partition and then boot from it and install to another partition?
    depending on the OSes in question, yes

    I'm asking because i'd otherwise need a DVD writer to burn the disc image and then boot from the DVD.

    Also.. this is with regards to dual booting - i've got an 80gb drive with XP on it, if i install another OS (say linux or whatever) on my other 250gb drive, will it harm the XP installation?

    Thanks!
    your boot sector (first 512 bytes of the disk) will likely be overwritten. the hard disk your system boots from needs to be able to offer a boot menu, so that disk will have a multi-os boot loader stuck on it, which usually has key files for its operation stored on the parent os's disk (if you installed linux, for example, grub would stick part of itself at the start of the 80gb disk, with all its config etc on the 250gb disk)

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