[HOW-TO] Dual boot Windows and OS X from different Hard Drives
 

I figured since I posted this material in a different post in a reply recently, I'd throw this out there for people to use. Its an old method and can be found all over the net.

This method will use the Windows bootloader on the Windows-installed HD. (any other methods to do this can be added to in posts later)

The windows bootloader can be used to select (at pre-windows startup) which system to boot.

Copy the chain0 file from your OS X drive located at:
to your windows drive's root directory (ie. "C:\chain0")

Now boot into windows and add
to your Windows bootloader via many different methods. A few of the most commonly used methods are:

1) enable hidden files/folders and system files from the Folder Options menu. then navigate to C:\boot.ini to edit with the code above.
2) Right click on "My Computer" and select Porperties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery "Settings" and click "Edit" to add the code above.
3) Control Panel -> System (from classic view) -> follow method 2 from here.

Go into your BIOS and ensure that your Windows HD is the one that is selected to boot. When you turn the computer on, you should get a menu for

Windows
Mac OS X

You can choose either, and once you select and press enter, it should automatically boot into the desired OS. No other settings required. You can also change the default system to either drive using the same Windows bootloader.

if osx and win reside on different drives, one simply choose bootdrive with bios (f12 for me).
so no editing any bootfiles neccessary :)

Yes... but this isn't a really nice option... best to use a bootloader like easybcd, they are working about a 2.0 beta version booting from different drives and pc_efi.
News about it on this thread

This is a simple edit when using windows and OS X. There are a lot of other options out there but until the new chameleon version comes out, none are as simple to noobs.

What exact version of chameleon are we then waiting for?

I am looking for having a possibility to boot into Windows Vista x64 from chameleon, since OS X is on my first SATA Hdd and Vista is on the second SATA Hdd. Can someone hint me what to try? Fumbling around in BIOS everytime is not a nice option.

hi all, does anyone have another way for this ? i've tried this with boot0, chain0 boot.efi , but the osx won't load it keeps going back to the bootloader menu, i have osx 10.5.6 on 1 disk (sata) partitioned guid with chameleon 1.12 and win xp on another disk mbr also sata i'm running in ahci mode.

can anyone help me out

I can't copy the file! I found it in terminal, but I can't get to it with Finder.
What do I do? I'm going to try this from single mode while I'm waiting.

the way i do it is by just making my Mac HD the default(in BIOS) and using Chameleon to boot everything

yeah but with chameleon 1.0.11 it is not possible to see boot options ranging over many HDD's however with the new Chameleon 2 RC1 there is no need for messing around with files as it searches your whole system for bootable disks, over all your HDD's

Chameleon 2.0RC1 is coming along very nicely.

However, there is one issue that I ran into when using it to dual boot WinXP and Leopard on separate drives, so I thought I'd share the solution here.

Anyway, I installed RC1, and it gathered the information for all my bootable disks correctly, only upon reboot I'd select my WinXP NTFS partition and it would hang with a flashing cursor on a black screen.

Turns out that in order for WinXP to be dual-bootable in this fashion, it needs to be the selected boot drive in the BIOS... but to get to the Chameleon bootloader, the OSX drive must be selected as the boot drive in the BIOS. Quite the conundrum.

The solution turned out to be rather simple... make sure to include a small (or in my case, large) HFS+ partition on the same drive as your WinXP install, and install Chameleon to that drive. This satisfies the need for WinXP to be the default boot disk, and for Chameleon to control the boot process.

So to illustrate, my drive layout looks like this:
[DRIVE 1]: GUID - (600GB Leopard Install)
[DRIVE 2]: MBR - (100GB WinXP Install) - (350GB HFS+J Scratch Disk)

I installed Chameleon RC1 to the 350GB HFS+ partition on drive 2, and now it pops up as the 'default' disk in the chameleon bootloader screen, and the Leopard/WinXP disks are also both listed as bootable options. The nice thing is that since there is no bootable kernel on the scratch disk, Chameleon times out and defaults back to manual select mode, waiting for you to select which OS to boot from... so you can walk away from a reboot and not have to worry about being there to hit F12 at the appropriate moment.

Just my .02

This is a know issue, its an XP limitation, as it can only boot from the drive considered the 1st drive in BIOS order (the one you select as the boot drive in the BIOS). Until Chameleon adds drive order swapping you would always have to put chameleon in the same drive XP is located.
Another solution would be using a third party boot manager that allows drive swapping.

It took me a while of searching around to come up with the solution to this known issue, so I figured I'd post it here since this thread is titled 'booting OSX and Windows on separate drives'... I figured that it might make it easier for somebody else experiencing the same problem to find the information.

After having used Chameleon for the past few days, I really like it, and don't plan on swapping it out for a different bootloader. ;)

But thanks for the alternative course of action. :)

You dont really have to swap chameleon for something else, just use it as ONLY a bootloader for OS X and use something else as the bootmanager to select which partition you want to boot from. You can read here about which Boot Managers support drive order swapping. I'm using BootIt NextGen paired with Chameleon 2 without much troubles, though I dont use XP anymore.

hmm thts weird, i keep OS X as my default(Chameleon 2.0) and it boots perfectly well... I'm using Vista though, so that might be the solution(if u want to call "Vista" a solution :p lol)

OK...Let me throw a curve...

Vista came pre-installed on my machine on a SATA drive.
I added a ATA drive to store my music, and this appears BEFORE the SATA in the BIOS.
My OS X drive is ATA also, the music drive became the slave.

If I boot off the Vista drive, I have no problems.

If I boot to the OS X drive, I get Chameleon 2 Bootloader. If I select Vista, its fine. If I boot to OS X regular, I get a black screen. OS X verbose, I get a TON of text that flys buy too fast to read, then a black screen.

If I boot to OS X iPC Live, then rd=disk1s1, its fine, and right now, this is the ONLY way I can boot into OS X.

I'm wondering if someone can help me get my system to dual-boot.

I have OS X 10.5.8 running right now. My only complaint is that I can't play some of my games (TF2 specifically), and I can't select my microphone as an input device. I'd like to setup a dual-boot so I can do my photography / video editing work in OS X and my gaming in XP / Vista.

Here's my drive structure:

250GB - OS X
500GB - Photo's
200GB - Backup
250GB - Windows

So having OS X installed first, how would I go about installing XP or Vista onto my Windows drive, and have it as an option in Chameleon to boot from? I'm using the latest version of Chameleon.

Thanks!

Apologise first if I misunderstood anything.

But doesn't Chameleon bootloader already provide boot options??

This is how I see it (doesn't matter which OS to install first):

Let's say you want to install mac os first.

Bios settings: usually people have put AHCI up.
1. install mac os on hard drive (A)
2. Bios setting: Put back to Enhance mode. And boot priorities to DVD rom, boot from hard drive (B)...
3. place windows dvd into dvd rom and install to hard drive (B).
4. once installed -> Bios -> AHCI up, boot priorities: boot from HD (A)
5. Chameleon can see all available OS.

Pretty straight forward isn't it? Noob like me can also do it ;)

If you install in different disks its as easy as you said it, only that it wouldnt work for XP, cant boot it from chameleon if it lives in a different HD. Installing them in the same disks would be a bit more complicated (mbr would be overwritten usually).
Also you should only need to change SATA modes to install Windows if you install a plain XP without AHCI support built-in, Vista and 7 supports AHCI out of the box, with Microsoft's instead of manufacturer's drivers but they work fine.

Is this still the case? I looked at the release notes for subsequent versions of Chameleon and have not found anything to suggest it works...

I have a working SL install (on HD A), and wanted to pull the HD (HD B) out of a working XP box I have and move that to the SL system, set up to dual-boot, but keeping everything on separate drives.

I intend to use it infrequently enough that I'm willing to BIOS select the HD, but was researching to see if nicer method existed. Given how infrequently I was going to do it tho, I'm not inclined to install/do anything that would jeopardize my existing install.

thanks for any info!

Dual Boot
 

What I found was definetly a problem with my install, BUT

My bios gives me the option of pressing <Esc> to get a boot menu, so I can pick a drive to boot off of. I like it cause I can now keep bootable CDs in my optical drive and not be concerned.

My configuration was:
Drive (A): NTFS Windows Vista. Totally unaware of the OS X drive, as it did not recognize the partition. 250 Gig SATA - 1 Partition
Drive (B): NTFS Data drive, non-bootable. 200 Gig ATA - 1 Partition.
Drive (C): HFS Tiger - Then Leopard. Would not boot on its own. With Chamelion 2 installed it would boot to the menu showing drive (A) (Booted Fine), (B) Didn't figure out how to remove it from the boot menu, low priority, and drive (C) (Would not boot) 60 Gig ATA - 1 Partition

I have learned that the problem was definetly the install. The partition got wiped do to my error, reinstalls failed, but told me the boot problem could be fixed. Its now a bootable Vista drive that is independant of drive (A) so I can do some massive networking experiments, and if I trash it, I still have a usuable computer for the family.

I have drives laying around collecting dust. Makes this quite easy for me to do.

I simply added another HD to my machine (Actually pulled it out of a G3) and re-formatted it it to MBR, and a single HFS+ partition and installed my OS.

It behaves well. The install I used is Leopard, and no Chameleon 2 on it, so I had to add it after. When running OS X, I have 3 local drives. When trying to boot Vista, its on its own HD, so it doesn't cry...I doubt it even knows that OS X is on here.