XP32 Vista64 Dual Boot and Multiple HD's

[Syd]

Morning guys I've done a fair bit of research and (think) I understand the basics, however just wanted some advice on what to do with a couple of things.

Firstly apps that I want to access on both platforms - Skype, Itunes etc do I install them on one drive
and access the same drive from both vista and xp or install them twice?

Secondly is there a way to 'blind' Xp from seeing the Vista HD and vice versa - mainly to limit the amount of drives I see and also to prvent me being a muppet and installing on the wrong system drive !

Plan is to have:

XP Drive 200gb samsung spinpoint
Vista Drive 150GB Raptor
Data Drive(photos music etc) 750GB Spinpoint
Image BAckup drive 350GB WD

Make sense?

[this_is_gav]

1) 95% of apps will require installing on both operating systems in different locations (so you can't install the same program on both operating systems to the same place on a 3rd hard drive). Some will let you run them just out of an unzipped archive fine, but they're usually so small, you might as well install them twice anyway.

2) By default both XP and Vista will name their drives C: during install - XP can be fussy if you have drives on multiple controllers, but it does usually get it right, and it seems better after SP3. If that's not enough for you, you could just remove the drive letter in Computer Management > Disk Management. This will leave the drive and data intact, but remove the drive from My Computer in the operating system you are currently in.

Set up seems good. A good, sensible approach used by most. I suspect you'll need a larger backup drive soon though.

[Syd]

1) 95% of apps will require installing on both operating systems in different locations (so you can't install the same program on both operating systems to the same place on a 3rd hard drive). Some will let you run them just out of an unzipped archive fine, but they're usually so small, you might as well install them twice anyway.

2) By default both XP and Vista will name their drives C: during install - XP can be fussy if you have drives on multiple controllers, but it does usually get it right. If that's not enough for you, you could just remove the drive letter in Computer Management > Disk Management. This will leave the drive and data intact, but remove the drive from My Computer in the operating system you are currently in.

Set up seems good. A good, sensible approach used by most. I suspect you'll need a larger backup drive soon though.

Thanks for the quick response, that answers my question perfectly

[Gibbo]

2) By default both XP and Vista will name their drives C:

This is not true.

My last XP install defaulted to G: the partitions are given letters at random I reckon...I ended up by disconnecting all discs apart from my target disc just so that I could get the boot disc to be labelled C: in XP and had to install a second time as a result.

[shaithis]

I have a similar setup with 3 different Windows OS multi-booting......

I do not hide the drives though and each program I want on multiple installs I try and run from another install.

It's surprising how many apps will run without being re-installed, especially games (and steam can even be installed and then registry changed to point to a common steam folder).

A lot of the tools I use are only installed once but available on all 3 installs, MS Office is one of the few that has to be installed again, which sucks considering it's size. Admittedly, you will lose the settings in 99% of cases but then if you installed the app again you would have defaults anyway.....and if they really are that much of a pain to setup again, you could always go hunt for registry keys in the other install (although some key locations change between XP32 and Vista64 and you would need to edit the .REG file accordingly)

[this_is_gav]

This is not true.

My last XP install defaulted to G: the partitions are given letters at random I reckon...I ended up by disconnecting all discs apart from my target disc just so that I could get the boot disc to be labelled C: in XP and had to install a second time as a result.

As I said it can be messy if there are drives on multiple controllers (these can include some memory card readers too, even if they're empty). I've experienced it myself, like many I guess, but I haven't for a couple of years now, and never on a PC with a single hard drive, regardless of how many partitions there are. If there's a single hard drive split into 2 partitions, it always gives the partition you're installing on C:.

On a desktop with multiple drives you could just disconnect the others while you're installing, just to be sure, as you said.

It's certainly not random though.