How to put 2 partitions on an external hard drive.

Do you and your son share the same computer?

smalltown said:

My son would like to create a dual boot operating system. We understand (at least we think) that we need to create 2 partitions on a single drive and install one operating system on each. Hopefully that will give him a dual boot menu when he starts up ?

Our problem so far has been attaching his hard drive externally to my desktop and trying to get the 2 partitions.
We are stuck at this point. Here is a photo of what his drive looks like right now.

Any help would be appreciated.

You would be much better off splitting that large 232GB partition on the main drive. An OS partition can run very nicely on 64GB, but you can make it larger. That way the dual boot menu would be easier to manage. Here is a tutorial here on Tenforums. It is written for dual booting 10 & 7, but the concepts are the same. You would simply shrink the existing "C" partition to around 64GB or 96GB (plenty of room), create a new 64GB or 96GB partition for the install of the second OS. That (the new partition) would be the one you would choose when installing the second OS. Take a look and see if the tutorial gives you what you are looking for.

TC

Dual Boot Windows 10 with Windows 7 or Windows 8

smalltown said:

Josey no I am just helping out by connecting his drive externally to mine.
Tomcat thanks for the link we will try that.

Good it will work.

smalltown said:

Samuria no uefi just a regular Bios. Per tomcats suggestion we did shrink the first partition to 96GB. The second partition also has 96GB. Just called him, and he has successfully installed both operating systems (win 10 and Win 7) , and his laptop is booting to the "dual boot" menu. He is just finishing getting a few drivers.

Excellent! Please post back when all done, would love to hear how it all went.

Good job!

TC

Bree said:

All sorted by the looks of it, but for others reading this thread - MiniTools Partition Wizard is available as a bootable CD so you could have done it without removing the drive.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/comp...otable-cd.html

Thanks, Bree. Further info. Bootable is paid version only.....



Bootable Partition Manager| MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable Edition