Windows 8 dual boot question

[Berin]

I've bought the Windows 8 upgrade, but I don't want to lose my Windows 7 yet. I've cloned my Windows 7 system drive to another hard drive in my machine. Can I switch between Windows 7 and 8 if I do the windows 8 upgrade on my 2nd hard drive, then choose which hard drive I want to boot from in bios?

 

[Clive]

I'd prefer to see both instances of Windows 7 in the normal (non-bios) boot menu first.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667(v=ws.10).aspx

And then upgrade within the cloned version.

 

[Berin]

Hmm, would that dual boot work? - windows 8 and windows 7 will be on different discs, not a partitioned disc.

 

[Clive]

Have you got the (100mb) System Reserved partition on both Drives?

I've got/had several machines dual-booting and IIRC one time Windows 8 decided to use a (boot) partition from the "old" drive which wasn't what I wanted it to do.

Booting from the bios should work - if it was me and I didn't want to go the previous route (windows 7 + windows 7 dual boot) then I'd physically remove the original drive before trying to run the upgrade on the clone just to be doubly sure Windows 8 didn't mess with the original drive.

 

[Berin]

Both drives are 120gb SSD's, no partitions - so there's probably only room for one OS anyway.

I looked at the boot control stuff, but it looked a bit beyond me.....