>I have a box currently using Vista. Monday I'm going to the MS thing to get my Windows 7 freebie. I want to do a clean install of 7 so I have a new Samsung 1 TB on order. Plan to add it to this box, make it a bootable Windows 7 drive and then I can use the boot order in Bios to select which "box" I want to run, letting me continue to get work done whlie I take my time getting the Window 7 drive set up with the software I need.
>
>Question: does anybody know if I can set up the window 7 bootable on "F:" with the box booted in Vista or do I need to hook up the new drive, change the boot order in bios for that drive to be the primary, then run the Windows 7 install DVD?
>
>I don't think the latter would be difficult as it would be like putting it on a new box, but I thought someone may have played with doing this recently and might have some ideas as to the easiest way.

Not sure what you're asking here - are you asking if you can run the Win7 installer and tell it to put Win7 on a secondary drive, from within Vista? i.e. so you can continue to use the computer under Vista while Win7 is installing? I think the answer to that is "no", an OS installer typically wants full, unfettered access to the hardware (or at least what it thinks is the hardware [e.g. a hypervisor]).

At the very least, if you're running Vista while installing Win7, Win7's install drive will be drive F:. Although I believe modern Windows OSs support their system drive being something other than C:, you can get in trouble with some third party software that assumes C:.

I'd really recommend your second approach.