Why Dual Boot with Just One Drive? Vista Tips Discuss Why Dual Boot with Just One Drive? in the Windows Vista forums; I am raising the question posed in my title. I can understand why early on one might have wanted to dual boot on separate partitions (SPs) with XP and Vista. ...

[Znod]

I am raising the question posed in my title. I can understand why early on one might have wanted to dual boot on separate partitions (SPs) with XP and Vista. However, I can't see much reason for doing so now unless one has a highly indiosycratic system or must use programs that are incompatible with Vista.

For me, everything works very well in Vista (especially both 5600 and 5728) except that I am unable to sync my hand-held with Outlook. And, actually there is a way to do so with a registry edit. I just haven't gotten around to doing the fix yet. Also, both of these version are very stable and capable in general.

Mind you there is no problem with SP dual booting. And, doing so is a good way to learn something new. But, especially if one's hard-drive space is limited, then my suggestion is to consider not doing an SP dual boot system.

However, I emphasize that it is important, at least to me, to always leave a path back to to where I started. Rather than to use the SP dual-boot option, my preference is either to install different systems of different hard drives or to make images of the systems I want to be able to return to on an external drive.

[felix8406]

I am running just Vista on my Desktop bacuse, like Znod mentioned, everything is working like a champ. However, on my laptop, I am doing a dual boot for three reasons; Vista is just a beta, and for now, I am not planning to get the final version for my laptop (I will get a fnal version for my desktop though). My second reason is that my laptop, with the current configuration, runs much better with WinXP. My third reason is that when I want to take a break from working, I'll go to Vista and play around with the system for a while.
To me the current version of Vista is complete, but if one don't have the bucks, one must keep the trusted WinXP available.

[Davehc]

Sure, you are entitled to use your own preferences. I don't think it makes much difference whether it is with separate partitions or separate disks.Using an external drive is, I feel, a little overkill. I do have Xp and Vista on separate hd,s however. In the earlier days of testing , the beta's came so thick and fast that it was neccessary to have a quick way of exiting but still leaving a current and working OS on the computer. Being a complete nerd, I use both almost in parallel so that they are up to date with bookmarks, documents, program data etc. Now that the beta testing is over (except for maybe a couple of bug solving releases, I hear) maybe it is time to consider dumping one Of the OS,s. Like you, I am totally happy with 5728 and am regarding it as my main operating system.
I do keep a current image of both systems on CD's - you never know!