Hi,

I have my hard drive that i would like to change with another one (empty) to install a clean copy of XP/Leopard on it. The hard drive that i have in my laptop right now has XP/Linux 8.04 dual boot on it.

Here's my question: can i just change my hard drive, install XP and Leopard on my new drive and use it, then if i want to re-use my old hard drive with the dualboot, just pop it back in and i can boot normally in XP or Linux?

I guess that i want to know if the bootloader is on the hard drive itself, and not on my machine. Both hard drives would have each their own bootloader, and would i have no problem in switching between them?

to repeat:

i have my XP/linux drive
take it out, put new empty drive in
install XP on new drive and then OS X through x86project (Kalyway)
take out new drive with OS X
put old drive back in with XP/Linux and have no problems whatsoever.

I really need to make sure that i can still use my old drive afterwards, so that i don't lose my old XP/Linux with all my files and programs (quite important). If it is not possible, then it would mean i don't totally understand it, and i'll just leave it as is.

thanks to all who can help me! im not that much of a hardware genius and some people here are quite apt at it, so any help would be much appreciated!

Hey,

If you are still looking for the answer to your question:

the bootloader does indeed, live on the harddrive. so, replacing hard disks will allow you to boot on your old xp/linux system and on your new osx system. No files will be lost.

There's nothing on the machine itself that stores boot info. You can rest assured.

What you may get trouble is to use BOTH drives at the same time, but since you're not trying to do that, from what I can see on your question, you are safe!

Best

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