Windows – Proper way of installing new SSD in a dual-boot machine

bootloadermulti-bootssdwindows 7

I've recently purchased a SSD where I plan to install Windows 7 from scratch. I't has a SATA 6Gbps interface.

The machine where it is going to be installed is a dual-boot PC with a single HDD containing Windows XP and Ubuntu (and the bootloader). After installing the new SSD it would be a triple-boot system. After Windows 7 is installed, I'll finally replace the old Ubuntu partition with the newer version 12, so it will add a new bootloader recognising all three OSes. I've two questions on how to proceed:

  1. (UPDATE: I removed this point since it was answered in a separate question).

  2. When Windows 7 is installed, it will also install its own bootloader. I don't really mind the drive it gets installed since Ubuntu 12 will reinstall a nice GRUB after that. But I guess the drive with higher boot priority will get its MBR overwritten with the W7 bootloader. Should I configure the new SSD as first boot device, then install W7 (and let the bootloader get installed in the SSD), then change first boot device to HDD and install Ubuntu 12? Or should I let HDD in first place, then connect SDD, install W7 (bootloader will get installed in HDD) then install Ubuntu 12?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

So you want to have your old installation of WinXP on the old drive and on the new and fast SSD drive Win7 and Ubuntu 12.04. Ok, then the safer way to proceed is:

  1. remove the old drive and install the new SSD drive
  2. partition the new SSD drive (e.g. using a livecd or even better a USB pen with gparted) to have (at least) three partitions. The first NTFS, the second ext3 or ext4 and the third swapspace.
  3. install Win7 on the new drive
  4. add to the system the old drive
  5. (optional) repartition the old drive to host a ext3/ext4 partition to be used as storage for huge, disk-hungry programs (e.g. eclipse, matlab, etc.). This will somehow load-balance the disks usage without the need of a striped raid. If you don't plan to dismiss your WinXP soon and if you think you'll need a similar thing on Win7, create also another NTFS partition.
  6. install Ubuntu on the new drive, indicating the newly created swapspace and the new disk's MBR (/dev/sdx - grub2 doesn't love to be installed inside a partition) as destination for the boot loader.
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