Windows 7 install

[Paul111]

Dear members,
My friend wants to install Windows 7 after midnight onto his second hard drive, the slave, or DISK 1, and then format the first hard drive. Is this possible given that I was under the impression the first drive, DISK 0 contains the Master Boot Record which should not be destroyed?

Could windows 7 be used to adequately format the first drive?

Best Regards

[redwudz]

If you install W7 on the slave, the computer will probably just boot from the old boot drive instead as it's master. I wouldn't use a slave for boot anyway. If you don't want to install W7 on the old boot, switch the cables and jumpers to make it the slave and the new drive the master.

If you cripple the old boot drive first so it doesn't have a boot.ini to tell the computer to use it for boot, that would solve the problem. Just use the W7 disc to start the W7 install process on the old boot drive and stop the W7 install after partitioning. You don't need to format it at this point. That will destroy the boot.ini very quickly. Then you can install W7 on the other drive and when W7 is up and running, format the old boot drive from the OS. I would do a full format also when using an old drive.

There are other ways to do this, but since you have a W7 disc, that seems the easy way. The MBR doesn't really have much to do with all this.

And welcome to our forums.

[ocgw]

Dear members,
My friend wants to install Windows 7 after midnight onto his second hard drive, the slave, or DISK 1, and then format the first hard drive. Is this possible given that I was under the impression the first drive, DISK 0 contains the Master Boot Record which should not be destroyed?

Could windows 7 be used to adequately format the first drive?

Best Regards

When you install Windows 7 you can install it on what ever drive you want and it will write a new mbr

Why not put in your Windows 7 disc and format both drives (if you are not planning on "dual booting") and then install Windows 7 on which ever drive you want

If you load Win 7 on 1 drive while XP is installed on the other you will have a "dual boot config", and when you start up it will ask you which OS you want to start w/

If I am correct in assuming your 2nd drive is a bigger drive (and probably faster) that you added to your PC and that is the 1 you want Win 7 on, then I suggest to do as redwudz suggests and make your second HDD the master

ocgw

peace