Dual Booting

The practice of Dual Booting is used for many purposes. Some use it for fun so that they can have a “Main” operating system which is used for daily work and an “experimental” OS which is used to try out new things. Others use it on a requirement basis. Sometimes software that you really need to use might not work on your existing OS (i.e. require a different version or a completely different OS); so without having to wipe out your hard drive or buy another computer, you can simply create a partition and run the OS that you need to, so that the software works.

Dual Boot really refers to only two OS’ co-existing on one system. In reality, many OS’ can sit on one computer and when this scenario develops, the Dual Boot turns into a Multi-Boot. This is useful especially in software development where testing on different systems is essential. For example, when developing a Microsoft Windows 7 based application it would be useful to have Windows XP and Vista also on the same computer so that the software could be tested on those OS’ as well. The beauty of the Multi-Boot solution is that the data can remain on the same system without having to be copied out to different systems during testing.

Dual and Multi-booting is a fantastic way to reduce hardware costs. Although it requires a little bit of technical knowledge to work properly, it is nevertheless, a great solution for developers and other users. This technology is available for both PCs and Macs.