Adding 2nd Bootable Drive & OS To D630 ??

Hi,

I have a Latitude D630 with Windows 7 Ultimate as the bootable C:\ drive and wish to add a 2nd bootable drive using a caddy holding the 2nd HDD in the modular bay.

If I wish to install Windows XP on the 2nd HDD it will presumably be configured as the D:\ drive and all the programs installed on it will adopt the assignation as being on D:\

Am I correct in assuming that if I swapped this drive into the main laptop drive bay most or none of the programs would work as their configuration would not be set up for a C:\ drive?

I would prefer to get the 2nd bootable OS on the drive in the caddy as it will save constantly having to remove the C:\ drive and swap it with the 2nd drive. I am sure this is a fairly common issue, it's just that I have never set up this type of configuration before.


Rgds
Snaffos

 

Its not a problem.

This is how mine is setup.
SSD in Laptop, 500GB Mechanical drive in Modular bay.
W7 on the SSD and the 500GB is partitioned into another W7 install and a storage drive.

If I want to boot to the 500GB harddrive I hit F12 during boot (temp boot device) and select the modular bay drive to boot into that instance of windows.

Each OS thinks its C:\ as the drive letters are relative to the OS.

So I can swap the modular bay harddrive into the laptop and it will work fine.

In a traditional dual boot setup with both OS's on the same physical drive with partitions with an older os like XP it might see itself as D:\, but W7 always makes itself C:\.

To make sure XP thinks its C:\ you should just remove the primary harddrive when install the OS. This is also a safe guard against formatting the wrong drive.

 

MaxGeek,

Would you please be able to check and let me know the part number of the module bay that holds the 2nd HDD, ie, the part number for the module that holds the HDD and replaces the DVD drive?

Rgds
Snaffos

 

OEM ones are very hard to find, but aftermarket ones work fine. Here's the one that I got for my D630:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180520954459

 

Here's an OEM one: Dell Laptop Modular 80GB Hard Drive P/N 8T687-A00 - eBay (item 130408171216 end time Jul-15-10 08:36:26 PDT)

Keep in mind that it's a PATA drive in the modular bay if you want to upgrade.

 

Yeah I got the aftermarket one off ebay. $20 from china.

 

I thought that I needed the SATA module if I am to use the original Dell shipped laptop HDD in it? The original laptop HDD is a SATA 160gb Seagate and that is what I hope to use in the module bay so I do not understand what you are going on about re PATA drives.


Rgds
Snaffos

 

Same here, I got one from the Chinese boys.

Rgds
Snaffos

 

OK, I got the SATA HDD module bay from the Chinese boys and placed a SATA HDD in it that had been loaded with Win XP. When I installed WinXP on this drive it was placed in the actual HDD bay rather than the module bay.

When testing the multi boot and multi drive options, I now have a 320gb HDD in the main HDD bay with Win7 Ultimate 64 bit and in the module bay I have a 160gb HDD with Win XP 32bit, both HDD file systems are NTFS.

The drives boot OK, however on booting to the main HDD I get a DOS type screen wishing to check the HDD in the module bay then some message about fixing errors etc on the module bay HDD.

After going through this process, both disks are visible to the Win7 Ultimate OS but if I use Internet Explorer, the web pages seem to take a long time to load. If I remove the module bay HDD then boot from a single HDD then web pages load instantly. It seems as though the OS on the module bay HDD is somehow interacting with the OS on the main HDD.

Is there something I need to configure in the BIOS to sort this out?


Rgds
Snaffos