Booting Up from Hard Drives

[shadowmotorsports]

I currently have two drives: a 500GB and 1TB GB Windows I also have a 250 GB SSD what would you suggest I do if I want to boot from 500GB SSD drive or the 1TB because I have a external backup storage drive. What I really would like to do is set my bios to boot to the F8 so I could boot from any of my drives.

 

[jay32267]

Not really sure of the question.....but basically you go into the BIOS to choose boot order.

As far as the BIOS giving you choices of which drive to boot....I suppose that would depend on the BIOS....but in my experience....most won't automatically give you a choice.

You have to actually go into the BIOS and change it each time.

 

[spdragoo]

You can only boot from multiple drives if all of the drives have an OS installed, which means either a) you're planning on buying 3 separate Windows licenses (very expensive for no benefit), b) are still running a program that requires Windows XP or Vista to run (as 99.44% of all programs that ran on Windows 7 will run on Windows 10, so only the older OSs would have issues), or c) you want to have 2 different Linux distros available.

Best method would be to use the SSD for boot/OS, use the 500GB for primary storage (i.e. My Documents), & the 1 TB as secondary storage.

 

[TJ Hooker]

You can only boot from multiple drives if all of the drives have an OS installed, which means either a) you're planning on buying 3 separate Windows licenses (very expensive for no benefit), b) are still running a program that requires Windows XP or Vista to run (as 99.44% of all programs that ran on Windows 7 will run on Windows 10, so only the older OSs would have issues), or c) you want to have 2 different Linux distros available.

You can run multiple Windows installations on the same machine with a single license.

 

[shadowmotorsports]

You can only boot from multiple drives if all of the drives have an OS installed, which means either a) you're planning on buying 3 separate Windows licenses (very expensive for no benefit), b) are still running a program that requires Windows XP or Vista to run (as 99.44% of all programs that ran on Windows 7 will run on Windows 10, so only the older OSs would have issues), or c) you want to have 2 different Linux distros available.

Best method would be to use the SSD for boot/OS, use the 500GB for primary storage (i.e. My Documents), & the 1 TB as secondary storage.

All three drives are windows 7 One is for gaming and one is for graphics and the SSD is for iRacing the external is 1TB for storage and back up.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I don't understand why you need to be switching between 3 active OS installations. If you want to keep your applications/use cases separated by drive, you can still do that with only a single OS installation. Just put individual applications/files on whatever drive you want.

 

[shadowmotorsports]

I don't understand why you need to be switching between 3 active OS installations. If you want to keep your applications/use cases separated by drive, you can still do that with only a single OS installation. Just put individual applications/files on whatever drive you want.

dont understand

 

[shadowmotorsports]

You can only boot from multiple drives if all of the drives have an OS installed, which means either a) you're planning on buying 3 separate Windows licenses (very expensive for no benefit), b) are still running a program that requires Windows XP or Vista to run (as 99.44% of all programs that ran on Windows 7 will run on Windows 10, so only the older OSs would have issues), or c) you want to have 2 different Linux distros available.

You can run multiple Windows installations on the same machine with a single license.

Isn't there a good boot manager program one that's really good.

 

[TJ Hooker]

What don't you understand? You can install games and applications wherever you want. If you want to have a game installed on the 250GB SSD, you can still do that even if you're booting from the 500 GB SSD.

Nothing you've told us so far indicates you actually need to have multiple OS installs.

 

[shadowmotorsports]

have multiple windows 7 OS installed ....If you want to have a game installed on the 250GB SSD, you can still do that even if you're booting from the 500 GB SSD. I have tried that, tried booting from the SSD and then running a program from the other drives with no luck. am I doing something wrong. The 500GB is a standard HD SATA. Please advise on how do this thanks in advance

 

[TJ Hooker]

Let's call your 3 OS installs OS 1, 2 and 3. If you want a program to be able to run while booting OS 1, you need to have installed it while running OS 1 (for the most part, some programs won't care). If you had booted into OS 2 to install it, you won't be able to run it from OS 1. So if you decide to keep the OS on the 500 GB drive, you'd need to reinstall all the applications on the other two drives (while booted into the OS on the 500 GB drive).

 

[karenjoly]

I currently have two drives: a 500GB and 1TB GB Windows I also have a 250 GB SSD what would you suggest I do if I want to boot from 500GB SSD drive or the 1TB because I have a external backup storage drive. What I really would like to do is set my bios to boot to the F8 so I could boot from any of my drives.

You are looking for EasyBCD
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
It will add Windows 7 drives to its boot menu:
" You can add multiple Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 entries; and you can also boot into BCD-based portable media, such as WinPE 2.0+ images".

 

[shadowmotorsports]

I currently have two drives: a 500GB and 1TB GB Windows I also have a 250 GB SSD what would you suggest I do if I want to boot from 500GB SSD drive or the 1TB because I have a external backup storage drive. What I really would like to do is set my bios to boot to the F8 so I could boot from any of my drives.

You are looking for EasyBCD
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
It will add Windows 7 drives to its boot menu:
" You can add multiple Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 entries; and you can also boot into BCD-based portable media, such as WinPE 2.0+ images".

Thank you very much now all I have to do is become well educated on that program.