panda_man Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 i have two hard drives one with xp on it and the other empty, if i install osx 10.4.8 on the empty hard drive, will i be able to select which hard drive to boot from when it starts up?? cos i saw someone doing it on youtube but that was one hard drive with two partitions.... any help much appreciated cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davejb Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 Depends on your motherboard BIOS as to how easy it will be. Most new ones have an option key (F8 or other) that will bring up a BIOS boot selection menu where you can select which drive to boot from. If yours has this it is easy. If it doesn't you'll have to go into BIOS setup when you want to change the boot drive and manually change the boot order. There are other ways to dual boot but this is my prefered method, no boot manager software to deal with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panda_man Posted August 28, 2007 Author Share Posted August 28, 2007 cheers yeah my mother board does do that cos i remeber when i reinstall windows i have to choose boot from cd drive, is it basicly the same?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davejb Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 Yup, when you have 2 hard drives installed it should list both as boot options in the menu, that's how I have mine set up. The osx drive is the default boot drive, if I want to boot to XP, I just hit F8 and select the XP drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwinux Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 Yes it works I have a hard drive (master) with XP and a second hard drive (slave) with Mac OS 1.4.8 In bios, boot on master drive. I have put the Chain0 file (find in the install dvd) in c: on the xp hard drive. Then i edit the boot.ini file and add C:\chain0="Mac OS X86" I proceed to the Mac OS installation. When it boot, i have two lines and choose between Xp or Mac OS to load. XP is the default boot (for the moment). Simple for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davejb Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 What ever works for you! The BIOS selection menu allows for completely isolated Operating Systems, neither drive or OS relies on the other drive for anything. easiest and least complicated way to dual boot, with the least chance for errors or problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailfish Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 Put OSx on the bare drive. Tell the Bios to boot to the Windows drive by default. Do the Chain0 dual boot method. That is the way to go. It's quick, clean, never fails and never needs maintenance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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