Dual Booting w/ Two HDDs

For those w/ experience in this area...How easy is it to do w/ say XP on one HDD and .Vista on another? Thinking about doing this on a notebook.

Which OS should be installed first?...Does it matter?

What problems (if any) may I encounter?

Will I be able to choose which OS I want at boot up w/ out messing w/ the boot.ini file?

 

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm (Skip Page 2)

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_xp__stepbystep_guide_with_screenshots.htm?page=1 (Skip Page 2 and 3)

(Easier - XP first, Vista second - Vista will take care of the boot.ini and stuff)

 

If you wanted you could just set your BIOS to have one drive as the first boot device, then switch to the other, install the other OS, and use the BIOS to select OS. This would allow you to not have to modify the boot.ini.

Personally, I think that gets kind of messy though.

 

It isn't too hard. In Bios, tell your computer to boot off of the hard drive Vista is on (or just switch sata ports if you're lazy). There are several programs such as easyBCD that let you configure Vista's bootloader so you should not have to modify any .ini files.

 

Okay....thanks for all replies.

 

EasyBCD modifies Vista's equivalent of the boot.ini.

 

^ I know that...it's just a program that does the dirty work for u using a GUI. Either way, I think i'll still ending up modifying it...and doing so myself.

 

Install XP first and then Vista. (Then the only thing you'll need to modify is the OS list-name shown for XP in the boot-loader)