Can bootcamp use a pre-existing windows 2nd drive?

[xgman]

On Leopard using 2008 mac pro with leopard on a single hard drive, can I place a 2nd hard drive with a pre existing windows vista partition (from a windows computer) on it and get it to be accessible in bootcamp? If so can it be NTFS or does it have to be Fat32.

Also, regardless of the above, can the bootcamp windows installation drive have more tha one partition that windows uses? for instance I would have 1 drive for Leopard with a single partition; one drive for windows with multiple partitions (one for windows as c:; one for windows programs, and one for windows games all accesible to the windows booting environment)

And lastly, can fusion be made to work with this new "bootcamp" window installation once it is already functional in bootcamp?

Thanks.

 

[Siron]

That would be interesting but my guess is that it would have a hissy fit because all of the hardware had changed. The BIOS would be looking for the usual stuff and when it couldn't find it, it may not boot. Give it a try and report back.
Alan

 

[xgman]

Not having used bootcamp before, I'll have to see what setup options it gives me and the if it allows me to put in my vista cd and run a install repair to load drivers for the new motherboard chipset. What drivers do I use for the mac pro motherboard? I s it just the normal Intel chipset drivers file that windows would normally use? What chipset is on the new mac pro? Lots of questions . . .

 

[jive turkey]

I tried this using an drive with XP SP 2 on it, and it booted fine, but like Siron pointed out, Windows balked at the hardware change and required me to re-activate the product, which I couldn't do since I didn't de-activate it on the original machine (I don't even know if you can do that or not).

 

[Siron]

I tried this using an drive with XP SP 2 on it, and it booted fine, but like Siron pointed out, Windows balked at the hardware change and required me to re-activate the product, which I couldn't do since I didn't de-activate it on the original machine (I don't even know if you can do that or not).

Just call MS and tell them you have changed your motherboard because the old one got fried (or some such tale). They will give you a new key. I had to do this several times when setting up XP in BC and Parallels (which requires activation in both situations). I told them I was having problems and had to reformat my hard drive and reinstall XP.
Alan

 

[jive turkey]

Thanks for the great advice, Siron. I am going to follow your suggestion.

 

[solvs]

I tried it and mine panicked and wouldn't even boot. Same as when I tried to change the mb in my old PC. I also tried importing from my Mom's old PC to her new MC partition. Didn't work at all either. We can do it at work, going from one machine to the same machine, and now with Leopard I've been able to use 1 external drive to load any machine, and it does work sometimes, but yeah, with XP you usually have to reactivate even if it does.

 

[xgman]

On a windows computer, switching motherboards etc requires you to do a "repair" install ion XP and just a "repair" from the vista cd on Vista. As long as bootcamp will allow me to switch to boot off of the vista dvd, then I can run the "repair" from there, BUT at that point I need to direct the repair to INTEL DRIVERS for the CHIPSET. I guess they would be on the bootcamp/Leopard cd, so if I could figure out where they were and copy them to a usb key, then maybe this would work, otherwise maybe I would need two dvd players connected to be able to bounce the drivber request to the bootcamp cd? Am I making this over complicated? Where would I find the windows chipset drivers for the new 2008 mac pro? What modek # chipset is it?

 

[xgman]

Well booting a separate vista 32 hard drive with 3 existing windows partitions formated in NTFS into safe mode from bootcamp resulted in a few driver auto updates and a reboot and then a perfectly working vista drive complete with a separate swap file parttion. It was actually considerably easier than swaping motherboards in a normal windows box. I was actually quite amazed at how easitly it worked and without any crashes whatsoever.

 

[steveza]

This is actually one of the winning features of Vista - you can move the hard drives between systems without the blue screen of death that greeted a similar procedure on XP. It works with Server 2008 too