Setting various operating systems on distinct drives, along with associated access problems
Setting various operating systems on distinct drives, along with associated access problems
Trying to learn about OS drives and access limitations. Say I have three separate SSDs inside my build: A, B, and C drives, installed with Windows 7, Yosemite, and Ubuntu separately respectively. There is a separate D drive, which serves as a storage drive, holding movies etc etc 1. How do I set a drive as default startup drive? And what do I press to switch to between the different OSes? 2. Is it possible to have a two screens, one with A and the other with B? 3. Is there a way to make drive D accessable (both read and write) by all three drives? How so? 4. Suppose if the all the OS AND storage drive are partitioned on the same harddrive, how can the scenarios in 1, 2, and 3 be achieved? Thanks guys, I am pretty new to this, hope that this is not too hard to answer.
Most motherboards let you configure a default boot drive by adjusting BIOS settings. The steps vary depending on the model, so check your specific guide. For Windows 7, you can locate instructions on Microsoft’s website to set the default operating system. To switch to another OS at startup, press the assigned hotkey for "Select Boot Device" during the boot process—usually near the screen edge or in the BIOS. [side note] With Windows 8, you can use a multi-boot setup on one drive, and the system will display a menu with multiple operating systems.
No, this isn’t possible unless you’re using a virtual machine.
It should work across all three unless one OS partitioned it differently, preventing the others from accessing it. Ubuntu and Windows typically function well, but OSX might pose access issues.
I’m not sure about your question, though. If you need further clarification, a How-To Geek article can help explain it clearly.
On 4, with a 5TB HDD split into 4 partitions, including OSes and storage, scenarios 1 and 3 are possible.