Computer Dual Boot Information
What Does Computer Dual Boot Means?
Generally, in daily use, people often use a single operating system on their PC and complete whatever they want to do. However, sometimes, for some personal or special purposes, people also do install two operating systems on a single computer and choose one of them to boot the PC according to their own needs at PC boot time. That is called the "computer dual boot". In fact, if it is possible, people often even can freely install two, three or even more operating systems on a single computer in theory, (which also called the "computer Multi-booting"). Therefore, do not feel so surprising about the dual booting things.
How Does Dual Boot Works?
Generally speaking, people often plunge one internal hard disk to their PC and install one operating system on the connected internal hard disk so that the computer can automatically read the only one hard disk and inner launched OS to boot entire computer during PC booting. However, that doesn’t mean people can use only one hard disk and one operating system there. If it is necessary, you also can add another internal hard disk to the same computer and install another type of OS on this newly attached internal hard disk. Of course, in order not to make the computer feel confused and cause troubles, you are also supposed to set the BIOS correspondingly and point out which type of operating systems you are prefer to boot your PC before the computer dual booting process. That is how the dual booting thing works.
In fact, in daily use, if your computer configurations allows, you often can freely install Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, Windows OS and Linux OS or Windows OS and Mac OS on the same computer.
Therefore, if you also want to try the dual booting stuffs, also go check which one of these OS couples is proper for you.
How to Dual Boot Dual Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 OS on Your PC?
Still don’t know what you are supposed to do exactly about dual booting stuffs? OK! No worry! To let your know more details, let’s just take the dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 as an example. Just imagine that you do have got Windows 7 installed on your internal hard disk main partition. And then, go on the farther steps as below:
Step1. Back up your important computer data.
Step2. Add another hard disk to your PC after turning this computer off and reboot it again.
Step3. Download and install the Windows 8.1 on your newly added internal hard disk.
Step4. Open and set BIOS. Merely set the hard disk that holds your wanted OS as the first boot item there.
And next time, if you want to boot your PC with another OS, just remember to set the boot hard disk back as you wish in BIOS interface.
Please Note: If you do not have extra hard disks for another OS, also do not worry. Merely partition your internal hard disk into several ones and install the second OS on a different partition. Also remember to point out the master boot partition for your PC.
Read More Information about Dual Boot:
1). Back up your important computer data.
No matter which version of Windows you’ve installed on your PC, you are supposed to back up all your important computer internal hard disk data, like essential files, folders, programs and more, on another external hard disk and extract it out from your PC before you start to do anything related to that dual booting stuffs. Only in this way, you can prevent your needed data from some unexpected data loss troubles, like disk corruption, accidental deletion or more during the dual booting process.
2). Install computer hard disk data recovery software to retrieve lost or deleted important data.
When you prepare no important data backups on external hard disks, flash drives, CDs or DVDs, it could be a really terrible disaster when you delete or lost something crucial off from your PC hard disk during that dual booting process. However, the situation also could not be as bad as you think. Before you really give up, you still can download and launch computer harddisk data recovery software to recover deleted or lost data from your original computer hard disk.
3). There is no limitation to the number of operating systems installed on your PC in theory.
Honestly, in theories, there is often no limitation to the number of the operating systems installed on your computer. In other words, as long as your computer can allow, you often are able to install three, four or more operating systems there. Though different operating systems do have different merits, in my opinion, you’d better also not to use too many there in case of worse troubles.
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