OS question

[Beware the talking cat]

So, I'm running vista 32 bit, and I recently discovered my university has a campus license of Vista Ultimate, so I'm thinking I would like to set up my computer to have two bootable disks, one with Vista 32 and one with Vista 64(so as to avoid compatibility issues for programs that don't like a 64bit OS).

I have several questions about this, the first of which is, is this even possible?
The second is: I will have any driver issues doing this? I imagine I will have to install drivers one at a time on this new copy of Vista, correct?

Finally, how much of a risk is there to installing this onto a drive currently storing 700GB of anime with nowhere to back it up to?
Should I just get a new drive entirely--probably a raptor or a small SSD?

[Dan]

Yes, it is possible.
I'm not sure what you mean about driver issues. Each OS would handle things on it's own, they won't be in conflict since only one will be running at a time.
To install another OS, you'd need to partition your HD, and that would erase everything on it. Go buy another.

[Assassin]

It is possible, like Dan said.

However, as for drivers... if you're going to run a 64-bit OS as well you'll have to make sure you have the 64-bit drivers for the OS as well. Many 32-bit drivers are incompatible with Vista Ultimate 64-bit version.

This laptop, as far as I can remember, took me quite a pain to install around 60% of the drivers required to have my laptop up running fine.

After the OS installation, I realized that I lacked compatible drivers for the graphics, mainboard, LAN, my scanner, my printers, my tablet and... pretty much anything that Vista x64 doesn't like (because of the 32-bit-ness. Luckily the wireless adapter installed fine on my laptop, so you can only guess what I did next - yes, 64-bit driver-hunting days.

Even now, I still could not resolve how to get around installing the infrared sensor drivers for my laptop, not to mention BlueTooth. Well, it's not like I need these two much anyway... (unless if I suddenly got lucky and bought myself a wireless headphone).

[ainsoph9]

Assuming that you have 64-bit PC, this should be possible. I would say that depending on how old your drivers are, some of them might not like running under a 64-bit OS. Therefore, I would check all of my drivers beforehand just to be sure about the compatibility. Also, you will definitely want another HD to back up everything you have, unless you feel like a little data dump. Since you will be essentially reformatting your HD, I would be sure that you have a day to do this, if you are not familiar with the process. Partition Magic is a good program for HD reformatting. If you have a friend or someone you know who knows how to do this process quite well, I would enlist their help as well because you never know what will go wrong.

[Beware the talking cat]

Yay!

In that case, yes, I will just go buy another HDD--I've been eying the solidstate drives, and for one just big enough to fit Vista and the pagefile, it shouldn't be horribly expensive anymore.

[Beware the talking cat]

As they say, strike while the iron is hot.
I just ordered a new 32GB SSD from newegg for 95(though, if I actually get the 20 dollar mail in rebate, this will go down to 75--but I'm not really expecting I will) and 4GB ram to go with it for $40 more.

Sidenote: I'm an idiot. I forgot to buy an extra SATA cable.

[Muffinman]

Like the others have said there is no reason why it should not work, but in the future if you know you will install two operating systems it may be a good idea to have two hard drives just in case you screw something up. That way you won't lose all your memory, which in your case would be your 700 GB of anime

[onizuka-gto]

As they say, strike while the iron is hot.
I just ordered a new 32GB SSD from newegg for 95(though, if I actually get the 20 dollar mail in rebate, this will go down to 75--but I'm not really expecting I will) and 4GB ram to go with it for $40 more.

Sidenote: I'm an idiot. I forgot to buy an extra SATA cable.

bloody hell, you getting SSD?

im not getting those until a decent size pop round, in like, 80 to 120GB size.

would love to pop one of those babies in a laptop.

oh, yeah are they in the 2.5" size or 3.5"?

[Beware the talking cat]

It's the 2.5" size and quite nice. Bootup time is ~10 seconds. Performance is improved all around.

If you already have a raptor, it probably won't make much of a difference, but if you don't, they are quite nice.