Dual Boot with GPT and MBR Drives?

Can I have both a GPT and MBR formatted drives on a dual boot system?

I would like to retain my Win 7 installation as is with MBR formatted hard drive, and after the Win 8.1 to Win 10 upgrade, do a clean Win 10 install with GPT (UEFI) format.

Hi there

obviously you won't be able to dual boot from TWO partitions on the same drive. Two different drives should be fine - but switching from UEFI to a normal boot you'd probably have to go into the BIOS before using the other drive to enable legacy boot --depends on your BIOS --if you are lucky the boot menu will give you a choice.

Cheers

jimbo

You can however switch boot up drives on start up (F9 and F8 keys on my PCs) and just manually select the drive you want to boot up with either GPT or MBR as long as your motherboard supports enabling both modes at the same time.

what will happen with two HDD's one mbr and one GPT

is you will find the GPT boot manager under UEFI boot options
and the MBR boot manager under the legacy boot options

you would have to select the device - the same way you select a bootable USB device, through the boot menu

So I won't be able to select the OS like I am now with the Dual Boot? Each OS is on a separate SSD drive.

two different drives - two different formats, two different boot loaders..

same boot menu, Nope

Thanks for the info. Doesn't look like I can do that, other than using the F12 at boot up to select which drive to boot from.

two different drives - two different formats, two different boot loaders..

same boot menu, Nope

Hi there

You Might be able to use a 3rd party Boot manager - although if you mess up booting you'll have to have some type of recovery to restore.

GRUB2 (Linux) also will offer a boot menu

You can have a UEFI and non UEFI boot menu (On the same Menu BTW) -- but you will need 3rd party boot manager or Linux GRUB2.

I've abandoned dual booting a LONG LONG while ago -- IMO it's easier to use a Virtual Machine for other OS'es. Overheads these days on using a VM are not high and modern VM software allows almost all hardware to work. For a serious gamer use the HOST OS (your main one) for the Games and use the VM's for legacy stuff (or totally new like W10 until W10 runs the games you want).

Cheers
jimbo

If 7 is important to you, having the 2 on different formats is a good thing. W10 won't be able to mess 7 up during updates.