Why use different HDD for multiple OS
- Thread starter avi
- Start date
nRiTeCh
Level N
Its a good practice to have diff. oses onto diff harddisks.
Imagine due to some virus attack your hdds MBR gets corrupt and unfortunately it contains multiple oses config? Then the pain to rebuild the mbr for all those oses and in the right sequence.
Also what if your disk goes bad- it gets formatted or corrupt?
If you have another physical disk which contains another os then at least you got the chance to troubleshoot your corrupt disk using that os like rebuild mbr, remove/clean any virus/ recover data/partitions etc.etc..
In the end its profitable and advisable to have various oses on diff. drives than putting all mess into one pack and then panicking for that mess when caught in those scenarios.
I have Win xp 64/ win7 32/ win7 64/ win8 64 bit all installed on diff. physical disks.
Off late my win 7 32 & 64 bit mbr was attacked by virus and yes it was panic situation for me and I posted here as well and at that time the disks containing win xp and win 8 were out of station for data exchange purpose. And I got no dvd/cd rom drive and ready no usb disk for rescue. Next day win xp disk was back I was glad to save my both win 7 oses by simply rebuilding the mbr in no time.
Imagine due to some virus attack your hdds MBR gets corrupt and unfortunately it contains multiple oses config? Then the pain to rebuild the mbr for all those oses and in the right sequence.
Also what if your disk goes bad- it gets formatted or corrupt?
If you have another physical disk which contains another os then at least you got the chance to troubleshoot your corrupt disk using that os like rebuild mbr, remove/clean any virus/ recover data/partitions etc.etc..
In the end its profitable and advisable to have various oses on diff. drives than putting all mess into one pack and then panicking for that mess when caught in those scenarios.
I have Win xp 64/ win7 32/ win7 64/ win8 64 bit all installed on diff. physical disks.
Off late my win 7 32 & 64 bit mbr was attacked by virus and yes it was panic situation for me and I posted here as well and at that time the disks containing win xp and win 8 were out of station for data exchange purpose. And I got no dvd/cd rom drive and ready no usb disk for rescue. Next day win xp disk was back I was glad to save my both win 7 oses by simply rebuilding the mbr in no time.
Last edited:
CapriAnupam
Level G
Really good points by @nRiTeCh. It is because of these reasons that I too like to install different OS on different hard drives.
I am mostly worried about having problems with MBR because of problem in one drive or other. If that happens, I cannot boot any OS, and have to repair the MBR first. That in itself is a thing to learn, and there can be different scenarios for that.. having two Windows, or having Windows and Linux on a drive.. all might have a different way of being solved. I will first have to search for a solution, and again, if it does not solve, then I am stuck without a bootable OS... and this makes the task of performing backup difficult too.. as you will then have to put in a live Linux CD, and perform backup on an external drive. Whereas, if one OS is booting from one hard drive, I can just take backup of other hard drive, without going through much process.
Also, there are other problems, as @nRiTeCh suggested.
So, I find it much better to have different OS on different hard drives.
Also, I mostly keep one OS as my main, and that is Windows. The other I keep changing. Sometimes I install different version of Windows, as an experiment, or a base to install and check software. Sometimes I try out different Linux distros.
This frequent change of OS is quite convenient if I have a different hard drive to install on. I can simply format the hard drive, and start fresh. I can perform all sorts of experiments on it, without risking, or having any effect on the other hard drive, which contains my main OS for daily use.
I do not have to worry about corrupted MBR, etc.
Also, it's quite easy to boot from the required hard drive. All you have to do is change the boot order, and that's it.
I am mostly worried about having problems with MBR because of problem in one drive or other. If that happens, I cannot boot any OS, and have to repair the MBR first. That in itself is a thing to learn, and there can be different scenarios for that.. having two Windows, or having Windows and Linux on a drive.. all might have a different way of being solved. I will first have to search for a solution, and again, if it does not solve, then I am stuck without a bootable OS... and this makes the task of performing backup difficult too.. as you will then have to put in a live Linux CD, and perform backup on an external drive. Whereas, if one OS is booting from one hard drive, I can just take backup of other hard drive, without going through much process.
Also, there are other problems, as @nRiTeCh suggested.
So, I find it much better to have different OS on different hard drives.
Also, I mostly keep one OS as my main, and that is Windows. The other I keep changing. Sometimes I install different version of Windows, as an experiment, or a base to install and check software. Sometimes I try out different Linux distros.
This frequent change of OS is quite convenient if I have a different hard drive to install on. I can simply format the hard drive, and start fresh. I can perform all sorts of experiments on it, without risking, or having any effect on the other hard drive, which contains my main OS for daily use.
I do not have to worry about corrupted MBR, etc.
Also, it's quite easy to boot from the required hard drive. All you have to do is change the boot order, and that's it.