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Question

2 OS, 2 hardrives

Mar 27, 2014 9:22PM PDT

Hello guys. I currently run XP on my pc and need to keep using it for various music/studio software that will only work with my XP.

I am however looking into buying a second harddrive for the purpose of installing a copy of Windows 8 on it.
I was after someones knowledge in laymans terms of the proccess of going about this.

I have heard that the older operating system should be installed first but was wondering if I could keep my current OS and harddrive as is and just installing the new hardrive and installing Windows 8 on it for dual booting?

Or if there was a more complex proccedure in carrying this out ie. unplugging my old hardrive whilst installing 8 etc?
Thank you in advance for any guidance anyone gives.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Let's say you unplug your XP drive during install
Mar 27, 2014 10:54PM PDT

Then you would get Windows installed with the new drive but no dual boot loader or OS selection at boot. Remember dual boot discussions and web pages are now plentiful so I'll be short. I would be guessing why you would want a system where to boot another OS you have to unplug/plug in drives. Sounds tedious.
Bob

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Answer
Are you sure?
Mar 27, 2014 11:24PM PDT

Are you sure the software only works with XP? Have you actually tried it with anything else or are you just going off of some random comment you saw somewhere? There are occasionally programs that won't survive the migration to a new OS, but I very frequently find that people don't even bother trying the program before claiming it won't work. Sometimes you even get people who interpret "we do not support that software on that operating system" as "it won't work on that operating system" when they're two entirely different statements.

Of course you're also assuming that you can find Windows 8 drivers for an XP era PC, which you may rather quickly find is not the case. You're generally lucky if you get drivers that will support one OS revision past your current one, but 3 is almost certainly a pipe dream. Before you buy anything, I'd go and make sure you'd actually be able to find the drivers you need to run Win 8, not to mention the hardware (minimum dual core CPU, 4GB of RAM, etc). Your whole idea might well go up in flames before it even gets past the planning stages. If you don't know what drivers you'd need, let alone how to find them, or you think Windows will just magically supply them, you need to take a couple steps back and learn the basics before you attempt dual booting anything.