Shared Hard Drive storage

Hi all

I have 2 Hard drives in my pc, one with Vista and one with XP pro installed on it, reason i have two is because Vista is rubbish (in my opinion) but great for gaming, and i use xp for everything else my question is, i want to install a 3rd HD purely for storage and backups only, can i save stuff from Vista and XP onto this storage HD or would there be an issue due to two different OS using it? and would this 3rd HD need a OS installed on it?

Nope, you don't need an OS on it.
For decades, now, I have had at least three drives in my systems; one for O/S and programs, one for temp files and archival storage (two partitions), and one for my data. If you set the data drive to be the same letter (I use E:), you can also easilly use TweakUI in XP to set the paths for My Documents (etc) to match those used by Vista.

P.S. Having a dedicated partition for temp files (first partition on a separate physical drive) eliminates all of the seeking needed to create temporary files and gives the system a serious kick in the behind. For your dual boot; though, I'd make a separate partition for each O/S.

Ok, ive been doing some thinking etc and have thought of a different config, ive decided to keep my Vista drive on my gaming machine and the XP Pro will be used in another pc i have here, so if i was to insert another (250gig) HDD into my Vista gaming machine purely for storage and backups as i have loads and loads of games, the question i have is, if my games are stored on the storage drive, can i put a desktop shortcut to any game and will it play/load as good as if it were on the same drive as the OS?

If the games don't need installation, yes a shortcut should work just fine; but, if they need installation, you'll need to install the game to that drive.

thanks for your replies DavisMcCarn well all my games are on the Vista drive at the moment but i want to move them to the storage drive, I take it its possible to move the folders over and then create a shortcut to them or would a fresh install of all games be required?

Edited by big C.O.Z, 26 October 2009 - 04:55 PM.

Your safest bet is to reinstall the games unless they have documentation on how to move them.