Installing Windows 7 when I already have 8.1 on another Hard drive?

[franco]

I have a Acer desktop with two hard drives and I would hope it is as easy as just buying a Windows 7 disc and choosing the hard drive I install to, but I have been told that things like GPT or UEFI on my current hard drive, or installing raid when I do the install could all cause problems between Windows 7, and Wndows 8.1.

So my issue is how do I look at my own system to find out if any of these problems / conflicts will occur? I don't really have much of a clue about conflicts between operating systems. My second hard drive comes up as a data drive under my computer, but it doesn't have any data on it.

 

[PCBuilderProbs]

as long as you partition your drive you'll be fine. Find a program to partition a small part of your hard drive as "another drive" even though it'll be the same drive, and install Win7 onto there and no problems will occur.

 

[Alabalcho]

I would just disconnect (physically) the 8.1 drive before starting instal of '7, then use EasyBCD to add "other WIndows" to the boot menu.

 

[kep55]

I agree with Alabalcho. I installed the Win 10 preview. When I first tried, it refused to go onto a virtual drive/partition. It wanted to take oveover the boot drive. When your done installing Win 7, look up the boot.ini file and make sure BOTH OS are listed. I believe from there you can also set which one is the default boot OS, but it's been a while since I played with that file.