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I had this nice scheme how to install Win 8 on my Sony Vaio laptop - unfortunately it is not working.
The Vaio has a single SSD disk with Win 7 on it. In additition I have an external eSata disk on which I installed Win 8 which worked well.
Because I did not want a double boot situation, I made the permanent boot order
CD reader
eSata disk
SSD
With this setup I had hoped it would load Win8 from the eSata when present and would skip directly to the Win7 SSD when the eSata was switched off hoping also it would put the Win8 bootmgr on the eSata where I had predefined a 50GB active primary partition.
Not so. First time it booted, I got the screen where I could select Win7 or Win8. That told me that I had a double boot situation. And when I switched the eSata off, it would go into a repair screen saying that a device was missing.
That was not at all what I wanted because it would have required to have the eSata constantly attached - even if I only want to run Win7 which is 95% of the time.
To fix that latter problem I restored my 100MB Win7 partition from an image and now Win7 loads normally without the eSata. But now I have no way to get at my Win8 when the eSata is attached. First I thought it was an MBR problem on the eSata. But even after I fixed that with Partition Wizard, it does not work.
To put insult to injury there is a strange BIOS setup in the Vaio. There is no way you can set the BIOS to boot from a specific device - you can only make a permanent setting as I have done above.
So I am stuck right now. I could, of course, take the SSD out during the Win8 installation on the eSata. But I try to avoid taking out the screwdriver. Does anybody have a better idea??
The Vaio has a single SSD disk with Win 7 on it. In additition I have an external eSata disk on which I installed Win 8 which worked well.
Because I did not want a double boot situation, I made the permanent boot order
CD reader
eSata disk
SSD
With this setup I had hoped it would load Win8 from the eSata when present and would skip directly to the Win7 SSD when the eSata was switched off hoping also it would put the Win8 bootmgr on the eSata where I had predefined a 50GB active primary partition.
Not so. First time it booted, I got the screen where I could select Win7 or Win8. That told me that I had a double boot situation. And when I switched the eSata off, it would go into a repair screen saying that a device was missing.
That was not at all what I wanted because it would have required to have the eSata constantly attached - even if I only want to run Win7 which is 95% of the time.
To fix that latter problem I restored my 100MB Win7 partition from an image and now Win7 loads normally without the eSata. But now I have no way to get at my Win8 when the eSata is attached. First I thought it was an MBR problem on the eSata. But even after I fixed that with Partition Wizard, it does not work.
To put insult to injury there is a strange BIOS setup in the Vaio. There is no way you can set the BIOS to boot from a specific device - you can only make a permanent setting as I have done above.
So I am stuck right now. I could, of course, take the SSD out during the Win8 installation on the eSata. But I try to avoid taking out the screwdriver. Does anybody have a better idea??
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Vista and Win7
- System Manufacturer/Model
- 2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
- Hard Drives
- 5 SSDs and 12 HDs