Please, evaluate my W10 / W7 dual boot project.

netia · 28 Jun 2016

I have been recently upgraded from Win7 Home x64 to Win 10.
Initially I was planning to quickly roll back to my old good Win 7.

But turned out I like Win10 more than I expected, so decided to make it my main OS from now on and use Win7 (I need it anyway, because of my old printer/scanner not supported by Win 10) as an additional OS in dual boot rig.

My upgraded W10 has been installed on my main 3TB Seagate HDD (with UEFI). I would like to wipe it out and do the clean install of W10 Anniversary edition as soon as ISO of its final version is available.

What I'm going to do next is :
1. remove above mentioned 3TB Seagate HDD from my tower and replace it with my other HDD - 500 GB Samsung.
2. clean install or rather restore from the image Windows 7 on this 500 GB Samsung HDD.
3. while Win 7 is already in place (on Samsung) - add up my main 3TB Seagate HDD with empty OS partition (or should it be an unallocated space ?).
4. Clean install Anniversary edition of Windows10 on it (Seagate) and mark it as my main OS from that time on.

I might have couple of detailed questions later on, but please tell me for now : is this scenario correct ? Any suggestions would be appreciated. :)
Thanks in advance.

cereberus · 28 Jun 2016

That will basically work, but if it was me I would put both OSs on same 500 GB drive and use 3TB drive for data.

Two main reasons

1) boot sectors all reside on same drive as OSs

2) You can image backup 500 GB drive to 3TB drive.

So I would restore image of 7 to 550 GB drive, shrink C drive as much as you want, then install 10 in unallocated space.

NavyLCDR · 28 Jun 2016

The first thing you have to do to meet the conditions of the EULA (End Users License Agreement) is to purchase a second license for Windows. If you took advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10, then you have only 1 license for Windows and 1 license means only 1 installed and activated copy at a time. You are wanting to run two copies of Windows from the same license, violating the EULA. It violates the rules of this forum for us to help you do that.

From the Windows 7 EULA:

1.b. License Model. The software is licensed on a per copy per computer basis. A computer is a physical hardware system with an internal storage device capable of running the software. A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate computer.

2.a. One Copy per Computer. The software license is permanently assigned to the computer with which the software is distributed. That computer is the “licensed computer.”

From the Windows 10 EULA:

2.a. License. The software is licensed, not sold. Under this agreement, we grant you the right to install and run one instance of the software on your device (the licensed device), for use by one person at a time, so long as you comply with all the terms of this agreement. Updating or upgrading from non-genuine software with software from Microsoft or authorized sources does not make your original version or the updated/upgraded version genuine, and in that situation, you do not have a license to use the software.

2.d.(iv) Use in a virtualized environment. This license allows you to install only one instance of the software for use on one device, whether that device is physical or virtual. If you want to use the software on more than one virtual device, you must obtain a separate license for each instance.

I hate to sound nit-picky but we don't like getting banned on this forum (even temporarily) for violating the forum rules.

netia · 28 Jun 2016

NavyLCDR said:

The first thing you have to do to meet the conditions of the EULA (End Users License Agreement) is to purchase a second license for Windows. If you took advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10, then you have only 1 license for Windows and 1 license means only 1 installed and activated copy at a time. You are wanting to run two copies of Windows from the same license, violating the EULA. It violates the rules of this forum for us to help you do that.
(....)
I hate to sound nit-picky but we don't like getting banned on this forum (even temporarily) for violating the forum rules.

I actually didn't say a word in my post about licenses I DO own; So why are you so quick to accuse me of crimes I've never committed or planed ? .

Guess what, not very nice welcome as for an absolute W10 forums beginner like me (it's my very first post here).
If you care so much of not getting banned, you would probably need to change your unfriendly / unhelpful attitude - first of all.

NavyLCDR · 28 Jun 2016

netia said:

I actually didn't say a word in my post about licenses I DO own; So why are you so quick to accuse me of crimes I've never committed or planed ? .

Guess what, not very nice welcome as for an absolute W10 forums beginner as me (it's my very first post here).
If you care so much of not getting banned, you would probably need to change your unfriendly / unhelpful attitude - first of all.

I apologize if it sounded like I was accusing you. I didn't mean to because you will note in my reply:

NavyLCDR said:

The first thing you have to do to meet the conditions of the EULA (End Users License Agreement) is to purchase a second license for Windows. If you took advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10, then you have only 1 license for Windows and 1 license means only 1 installed and activated copy at a time.

A simple reply of "I have two licenses for Windows" would have certainly been sufficient to clear up the misunderstanding.

Now, there are basically two ways of setting up dual booting. One is to have completely separate installs of both the Operating Systems and the boot files (system partitions) on separate drives and use the bios/UEFI boot menu to determine what gets loaded. To set that up, you install each OS on it's own hard drive with only that hard drive/SSD connected. Then you do nothing else and use bios/UEFI to determine which drive boots.

If you want to set up software dual booting from the Windows boot menu, what you want to watch out for is what physical drive you want the boot files (system partition) to be installed on and used from. The way I prefer to do that is to do as you suggested. Install Windows 7 on the Windows 7 hard drive, with only that hard drive connected. Then remove it and install Windows 10 on it's hard drive. I prefer to do clean installs to drives with nothing but unallocated space on them and let Windows setup make it's own partitions.

When you get Windows 10 set up and booting, add the Windows 7 hard drive back as the second drive. Boot into Windows 10. The Windows 7 OS partition will get a drive letter (and probably a few other partitions as well). Let's say Windows 7 gets F: for a drive letter. Open a command prompt (admin) in Windows 10 and add the Windows 7 to the boot menu using the following command:

BCDBOOT F:\Windows /d /addlast

Adjust the path in red to reflect whatever drive letter the Windows 7 partition gets.

Then you can adjust the timeout for the boot menu and the order the Operating Systems appear in the boot menu by running MSCONFIG (boot tab). I think you can edit the names of the Operating Systems as well.

You can also adjust the drive letters assigned using disk management. You'll probably have drive letters assigned to extra recovery and system partitions that you will want to remove (remove the drive letters, not the partitions, unless you really want to remove the partitions themselves). You can reassign the drive letter of the Windows 7 partition and it will not affect the boot menu - the boot menu does not operate on drive letters, it operates on partitions IDs.

You will end up with an extra system partition and recovery partition on the Windows 7 hard drive. I prefer to leave them there because if the primary hard drive fails and the computer won't boot from it, all you have to do is disconnect it and boot from the Windows 7 hard drive into Windows 7.

I hope that information is helpful.

netia · 28 Jun 2016

cereberus said:

That will basically work, but if it was me I would put both OSs on same 500 GB drive and use 3TB drive for data.
Two main reasons
1) boot sectors all reside on same drive as OSs
2) You can image backup 500 GB drive to 3TB drive.
So I would restore image of 7 to 550 GB drive, shrink C drive as much as you want, then install 10 in unallocated space.

Thank you for your fast reply and suggestions.

Here are my 2 reasons, why I've chosen to put my 2 OSes on 2 different HDDs :
1) this option is safer in case of disk failure (2 HDDs won't probably fail in the same time),
2) I'm planning to migrate to SSD (with my main OS - W10 only) late Fall this year anyway.

BTW.
I store all my backups on external portable disk drive anyway.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Should I install my OSes with the other HDD disconnected ? Is it the same in case of first and the second OS ?
Some people give such recommendation, but not all. So what's the science behind it ?

NavyLCDR · 28 Jun 2016

netia said:

Should I install my OSes with the other HDD disconnected ? Is it the same in case of first and the second OS ?
Some people give such recommendation, but not all. So what's the science behind it ?

The reason for installing the OS on the hard drive with only that hard drive connected is so that you know for sure where the system partition with the boot files is created. Lots of people have added SSDs to their computers, left their hard drives connected, installed Windows as a clean install on the their SSDs. Then they wipe the old hard drive not realizing that Windows setup used the old system partition on the old hard drive for the boot files and they are left with a non-booting system.

netia · 28 Jun 2016

Thank you very much for lots of useful information ! I appreciate it very much.

Now, there are basically two ways of setting up dual booting. One is to have completely separate installs of both the Operating Systems and the boot files (system partitions) on separate drives and use the bios/UEFI boot menu to determine what gets loaded. To set that up, you install each OS on it's own hard drive with only that hard drive/SSD connected. Then you do nothing else and use bios/UEFI to determine which drive boots.

Years back I used to have dual boot rig of Windows7 / Windows XP and then Windows7 x64 / Windows7 x32.
What I remember from that time - it was essential the older OS had been installed BEFORE the newer one.
Is this rule (the order of installations) still important ? Looks like not really... Am I right ?

One is to have completely separate installs of both the Operating Systems and the boot files (system partitions) on separate drives and use the bios/UEFI boot menu to determine what gets loaded.

Sorry, it might sound silly but I hope I won't be needing to go to UEFI each time I boot to determine what will get loaded. ....

I have to use UEFI/GPT on 3TB drive (Win10), but what would you advice me to use on the second, much smaller (500 GB) HDD (Win7) - UEFI/GPT or BIOS/MBR and why ? (possible advantages / disadvantages).

I prefer to do clean installs to drives with nothing but unallocated space on them and let Windows setup make it's own partitions.

Please note : my smaller drive is empty so I'll be able to install Windows7 on unallocated space there.
But it's not the case on 3TB HDD (Windows10), that is fully partitioned and need to stay that way.
Beside the main OS, it contains / stores huge amount of my (user) data (~~2TB).
Please check the screenshot below for reference (DM of my 3TB HDD).

[C partition wasn't yet renamed after upgrade to Windows7]

Please, evaluate my W10 / W7 dual boot project.-p1hgpak.png

netia · 28 Jun 2016

NavyLCDR said:

You will end up with an extra system partition and recovery partition on the Windows 7 hard drive.

I'm not sure what do you mean by "recovery partition" ? Hidden UEFI recovery partition, created automatically during any UEFI system installation ?

However re. Disk Management screenshot of my 3TB HDD from the previous post :
I think this 450MB hidden partition to the right of C:\ drive, that I never created myself - is just that UEFI recovery partition. Am I reight ?
Most probably it's been created during the recent Windows10 upgrade.
Could you or somebody else inform me what is it for ?

Superfly · 28 Jun 2016

My guess is that it's for launching Win RE so that one can run certain Windows recovery procedures... like the useless startup-repair thing.