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First let me describe my setup. I installed Windows 7 onto a harddrive, then disconnected it and installed Windows 11 onto another harddrive. With both drives connected I can boot into any system by use of BIOS boot menu.

The problem is that after some time booted into Windows 11, I have got Windows 7 disk badly corrupted. I deliberately didn't have any files read or written on Win7 disk while in Win11. I know the issue with Fast Start in Windows 11, but can't get how it might be able to spoil a separate drive.

There are some similar questions on the StackExchange:

Regularly moving NTFS drive between Windows 10 computers causes data corruption

USB SSD drive corruption when moving it between Windows 10 and Windows 7 machines

What I'd like to know is why Windows 11 is changing anything on another physical drive (may be there is some reasoning for the feature) and if there is a way to prevent it. Will it work the same if I make a standard dual boot without connecting and disconnecting drives?

In one of the discussions mentioned above someone suggested that Windows 10/11 may update NTFS version on any drive it can reach. Is that true?

AlexVB
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  • Fast Startup is what it is (and explained in one of your links) and affects ANY partition with a file system recognized by Windows. It can (and arguably should) be disabled. That said there's NO scenario where you can make a dual-boot with Windows 7 and 11. The former is too old to support the hardware required by the latter. – ChanganAuto Jul 17 '23 at 21:30
  • But why? What is the reason to write something to the drive user doesn't use? What info is stored there? Regarding the notice about hardware, let's talk about Windows 10 if you like. It has the same issue with Fast Start, AFAIK. – AlexVB Jul 17 '23 at 21:46
  • It doesn't "write", it hibernates, and any accessible drive is read and indexed, period. Windows 7 doesn't support Fast Startup and that is (should be) the obvious problem here. That and the fact that using Windows 7 in 2023 is dumb & dangerous if online. Nothing else to add here, honestly. – ChanganAuto Jul 17 '23 at 21:50
  • Pretty much the same question and the answer is as well applicable: [Windows 10 vs Windows 7 GPT filesystem incompatibility?](https://superuser.com/questions/1044206/windows-10-vs-windows-7-gpt-filesystem-incompatibility) – ChanganAuto Jul 17 '23 at 21:52
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    With a decent machine, run Windows 7 as a VM inside Windows 11. I do this - it works just fine. – John Jul 17 '23 at 22:00
  • @ChanganAuto Thank you. It's probably true but I can't say I have clear understanding of this. I didn't touch any files on "inactive drive", so it's like Windows 11 caches NTFS metadata on all drives and on boot starts to mess up anything that doesn't match the cache, even though it doesn't need to access the drives at all. Very bad design to me. – AlexVB Jul 17 '23 at 22:09
  • It is not a bad design. Windows 7 is old and out of support. Designers are making machines for new operating systems, not old systems. – John Jul 17 '23 at 22:20
  • @John If I got it right, you will have the same issue with Linux or even two Windows 10 setups on the same computer. – AlexVB Jul 17 '23 at 22:28
  • No issue with Windows 10 and a couple of Linux machines on my Windows 11 Host machine. – John Jul 17 '23 at 23:08
  • When dual-booting any Windows 8.x or newer and Linux disabling its Fast Startup feature is a must indeed. NOT a problem when multi-booting any combinations of any Windows AWARE of said feature, i.e., any combination of 2 or more Windows of any version 8.x or newer. Not a problem because this versions do have the required "drivers" to deal with booting from semi-hibernated partitions without corrupting data. – ChanganAuto Jul 17 '23 at 23:25

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