2 Hard Drives and 2 Operating Systems

[Dustin Mueller]

Hey all sorry if this has been asked before but I have a computer at work that has windows XP on it. I want to add an old hard drive that I have at home and use that with windows 7. Is there a way to have both hard drives connected and use the old one as storage without deleting windows. I have data on that, as do other people, that I may need to access from my hard drive. I realize that this is very poorly worded and I apologize for that. If more information is need please let me know.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes that can be done. On one of my laptops, I have two partitions, Win 7 and Win 8.1. Either OS can see the other partition, and if I wanted to...share out a folder for the LAN.

But I'm going to ask my usual question - Why?
What is the reason for:
1. Keeping XP on it, or
2. Why Win7 and XP?

Just move the data over to the Win7 drive and blow away the soon to be unsupported XP.

 

[Dustin Mueller]

The biggest reason for keeping the windows 7 is when I leave in a few year, I work in research lab as an undergraduate, I will probably take the other hard drive with me. The other reason is that many of our programs are research software that requires a license to use and I am not sure how to go about finding out if it is possible to reinstall some of the software on the new drive without any repercussions.

 

[USAFRet]

For reinstallation, you contact the company and ask.

If you really, really need some arcane application that only runs under XP, get Windows 7 Pro, and use XP mode.

 

[Dustin Mueller]

Yeah most of these only run on XP so that would be a must, but most companies for this software will require you to buy a new license even if you already have one... I have tried as we have 8 machines in the lab that I work in and I wanted software from one onto the one I work at. I will keep trying though thanks for the help.

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah most of these only run on XP so that would be a must, but most companies for this software will require you to buy a new license even if you already have one... I have tried as we have 8 machines in the lab that I work in and I wanted software from one onto the one I work at. I will keep trying though thanks for the help.

OK.
But yes....two drives, two OS's can share folders from the other, in either direction.