Dual boot Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 insider.

The Insider Preview can be installed on a logical partition right? My hard drive already has four partitions as such:

As you can see the D drive is a logical partition. If Windows can be installed on such a partition, then, I will create another one.

blackbirdabhi said:

The Insider Preview can be installed on a logical partition right?

Yes, Windows can be installed to a logical partition. Windows can also be installed to a virtual hard drive (VHD):
Question about install - Windows 10 Forums

I created the new logical partition from the D drive of 40 GB, and labelled it as such. However when I tried to install on this partition, I got this error: Setup cannot install Windows 10 on this drive as there is not enough space. I tried formatting it from the installer partition tool itself, but to no avail.

blackbirdabhi said:

I created the new logical partition from the D drive of 40 GB, and labelled it as such. However when I tried to install on this partition, I got this error: Setup cannot install Windows 10 on this drive as there is not enough space. I tried formatting it from the installer partition tool itself, but to no avail.

So, I took the time to set up my computer similar to yours:



I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to create a third primary partition, an extended partition, and two logical drives inside the extended partition. Formatted all the new partitions as NTFS. Booted the computer from a Windows 10 USB containing the latest insider preview. Selected custom install option, selected the last partition (the second logical volume in the extended partition) to install to. It all worked fine, it installed to the last logical drive and set up dual booting automatically. What does your disk management look like now?

This is what it looks like. New Volume F is the logical partition that I created. D holds all my data. C is the Windows Partition. Then there are the Recovery Partition and System reserved partition.

I expect the problem is that the system reserved partition is too small to be updated. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to remove 350 MB (MegaBytes, NOT Gigabytes!) from the front of C: drive. Add the 350 MB to the system reserved partition to make it a total of 450 MB in size. MiniTool Partition Wizard will have to restart your computer to resize the C: drive partition.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Notice I have expanded my system reserved partition is 4 GB in size with plenty of free space. That's because from time to time I like to stash a Windows installation image in there. Windows will not install if it doesn't have the space it wants in the system reserved partition and 450 MB is what the newest versions of Windows 10 creates by default.

Okay..I will try this out! Is this because both the OS' will use the same System Reserved Partition to boot? Also, do I really need the Recovery Partition as I already have a recovery media in form of my Windows 10 cd?

alphanumeric said:

Yes, once the official consumer build was released they changed the rules for the Insider Preview. It now falls under the same rules as the free upgrade. As far as I know though, if you have a digital entitlement for Windows 10 for that device, it can also be used to activate the Insider Preview. You could argue that your running two operating systems under the same license, but IMHO, if your only ever running one of them at any one time, what's the big deal? And even if you did the upgrade a second time to activate the preview, its still the same digital entitlement? Unless one is Home and one is Pro?

Also, as far as I know activation (digital entitlement) is tied to the device, not your Microsoft ID. Syncing shouldn't be an issue except that it will auto change things on you. You can pick and chose what's synced though.

I agree as long as you only running one at a time I don't see it as a problem. I just wasn't sure that MS would let it activate or not.

As long as the computer has a digital entitlement for Windows 10 stored on Microsoft activation servers, any number of Windows 10 insider installations of the same edition will activate on that computer, along with the original Windows 10 RTM.