Thinkpads Forum

Some time back, with my T41 and my T30, and with XP Pro up to and including SP2, I could load up a new hard drive with my IBM recovery CD's, put in the drive bay adapter and then boot off either drive - no issue. That stopped with SP2. Sadly so, as my only purpose was to build a new system but be able to use the old one until the transition was complete and then format the old drive.

I now have a T61p with Vista Business 64-bit preloaded.

I want to get a new, larger hard drive (current drive is 200Gb, 7200-rpm). I want to purchase a retail license for Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Then I want install the new drive as the primary drive, install Windows 7 and get it going.

Then: I want to put the Vista drive back in as primary and put the Windows 7 drive in the ultrabay.

Question: Can I boot off either drive (F12) with damaging the other drive (altering the boot record or something similar)?

Thank you, ... JDH

See my sig. That is exactly how T60p is running now. You just need to install Win7 and Vista separately.

I have XP on my primary hard drive, Vista on second hard drive, Windows 7 RC1 on a third hard drive. Of course I can only have 2 drives in the machine at any one time. I experience no problems.

As crazyfrog said, just make sure you only have a single drive in the machine during installation. After installation, put whichever drive you want in the main hard drive bay, and your second hard drive in the Ultrabay. Press F12 at boot time to choose the Ultrabay hard drive, otherwise the main hard drive will be booted. Whichever drive gets booted, whether in the main hard drive slot or the Ultrabay adapter, will be the C: drive, and the other drive the D: drive.

One note: If you have XP on any of the drives, disable your other drive(s) in XP (in Device Manager) to prevent XP from erasing your system restore points on the other drive(s). For Vista and newer, just make sure System Restore is not monitoring your other drives (this should be the default).

Thank you both.

I just went to the Hitachi site and thence to NewEgg. The Travelstar 7K500 500Gb 7200-rpm drive is not available for sale yet. There is a 320Gb drive but +100Gb is not worth the pain. I assume the 500Gb will be out shortly and probably before I get my Lenovo Windows 7 Desktop. ... JDH