Two windows OS reorganization advice.

[-RockMan-]

My new hdd should be at my house tomorrow afternoo, I have 3 hdd's which one I going to be recycled at a local hardware store.

Would it be in my best interest to put windows 7 on the new hdd with a 80gb partion for itself, leave it on the old 80gb seagate so it has it's own space.

or...

Take 2 80's gb one with window 7 and the other xp and file copy everything to the new hdd.


Keep in mind I am getring rid of a 3rd 80gb which is having so many problems.

 

[KSoD]

It might help if you told us the size of the new drive so we are not sitting here wondering if the new drive could hold the data from the Win7 and XP dump...

 

[-RockMan-]

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

ACtually I meant to say I am going to transfers about 20gb worth of data off of the old hdd, tomorrow evening.
Also I do want windows 7 or xp getting things mixed up with their set installed programs.
Last time I tried that with windows xp and windows 98 second edition, you should have seen the sparks fly, in the end xp corrupted 98's parition and I lost everything.

 

[KSoD]

Well you cant mix up the installed programs. I have no idea how you even accomplished that. Cause you need to get the profiles of the programs, which is not located in the same spot in XP and Win7, not to mention the Registry Keys. Again which will point to 2 different spots. Since XP is located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\AppData and Win7 is located in C:\Users\<username>\AppData it is kinda hard to have sparks fly when the locations are not even remotely close.

I am having a very hard time trying to wrap my head around what you are trying to accomplish. If you already have both XP and Win7 on their own 80GB hard drive, why in the world are you trying to combine them onto separate partitions on the 320GB? Why wouldnt you just add that to the system as a storage drive or backup drive and be done with it? Seems like you are making this a lot harder than it has to be.

 

[LFCJohnSmith]

I believe it is good practise to keep hold of all of your old HDD without trying to completly remove the information on them. The reason for this is because if you are for what ever reason questioned by policew for anything, they can look at the contents of your HDD and you can be proven to be not guilty, where as if you no longer have your HDD it can't prove your guilt, but at the same time it can't prove your innocence can it? If you want my advice I would keep your old HDD in a safe place, and keep it with youfor ever. Good practice. ;-)

 

[-RockMan-]

Well you cant mix up the installed programs. I have no idea how you even accomplished that. Cause you need to get the profiles of the programs, which is not located in the same spot in XP and Win7, not to mention the Registry Keys. Again which will point to 2 different spots. Since XP is located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\AppData and Win7 is located in C:\Users\<username>\AppData it is kinda hard to have sparks fly when the locations are not even remotely close.

I am having a very hard time trying to wrap my head around what you are trying to accomplish. If you already have both XP and Win7 on their own 80GB hard drive, why in the world are you trying to combine them onto separate partitions on the 320GB? Why wouldnt you just add that to the system as a storage drive or backup drive and be done with it? Seems like you are making this a lot harder than it has to be.

Mak, you totally missed or partly missed what I am trying to do.

1.I need XP to be on it's own hdd.
2.I need windows 7 to be on it's own hdd.

Reason for that software conflicts of any kind or both OS trying to write over each boot ini during bootup mainly windows 7.

3.For half of today I have had windows 7 over ride xp boot ini 3 times during trying to get it setup and leave xp.

My solution, I need some sort of 3rd party boot manager for OS's because windows 7 bootmanager aint cutting it and it's starting to make me angry.
Yes, both OS's are on seperate drives, realize though windows 7 is over riding the boot ini file everytime I reboot my pc, rendering xp's master boot record useless beyond repair.

 

[KSoD]

Wow you just went so far backward i dont know which way is up anymore.

You say you need both XP and Win7 to be on their own drive yet your very first post says exactly the opposite. So which is it? I think you are a bit confused about what your trying to do and in the process confusing us with how to explain it. Cause i can say right now, i have no idea at all what your trying to do or how to even assist you in accomplishing this goal.

You last post contradicts everything you first posted. If you need them on separate drives then why did you ask if you should copy them over to the new drive?

You dont need a new boot load. You dont need to manage it with anything but the Win7 boot loader. EasyBCD 2.0 Beta will accomplish the boot loading of Win7 and XP. It is quick and simple.

Other than that i have no idea on what is going on so i am not going to say more.