Dual booting Mavericks on a already installed Windows 8 pc

[SwiftMoosic]

I have a already built pc with windows 8.1 on a SSD. I would like to turn it into a dual booting system with Mavericks and 8.1. If I buy a new SSD to install Mavericks on it, would this allow me to dual boot my system? Or will I have to unistall windows 8.1 and make a drive with two partitions? I would like the two OS's to be on different drives, so will this mean I won't have to unistall win8? If I don't have to unistall win8, how would I go about turning this sytem into a dual booting system.

Specs: i7 4770k, Gigabyte z87n-wifi, gtx 770, 16gb ram, 250gb SSD, 2tb HDD

 

[Going Bald]

I have a already built pc with windows 8.1 on a SSD. I would like to turn it into a dual booting system with Mavericks and 8.1. If I buy a new SSD to install Mavericks on it, would this allow me to dual boot my system? Or will I have to unistall windows 8.1 and make a drive with two partitions? I would like the two OS's to be on different drives, so will this mean I won't have to unistall win8? If I don't have to unistall win8, how would I go about turning this sytem into a dual booting system.

Specs: i7 4770k, Gigabyte z87n-wifi, gtx 770, 16gb ram, 250gb SSD, 2tb HDD

If you buy a second SSD/HDD to install OS X, then no problem. Trying to install OS X on a pre-installed Win8.1 SSD you would need to reformat and re-install.
See http://www.tonymacx86.com/multi-booting/96000-guide-dual-booting-mountain-lion-windows-8-a.html

The only problem you might run into is the way Win8.1 is installed. Open the windows disk management tool and look at your SSD format - is there an EFI partition / System Partition / NTFS partition ?

If there is, then you installed UEFI and Chimera will not boot Win8. You will want to follow the Clover guide rather than the UniBeast guide - http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...-how-install-os-x-mavericks-using-clover.html

If you see only NTFS partition or a System Reserved / NTFS then you installed Legacy BIOS mode and you can use the UniBeast guide - http://www.tonymacx86.com/374-unibeast-install-os-x-mavericks-any-supported-intel-based-pc.html

 

[SwiftMoosic]

So I just bought a new 120gb SSD for Mavericks. I have a 2tb HDD which has data on it which I use in windows 8. Will I be able to use this data and store files that I make onto this HDD as well. Or will I only be able to store data on the 120gb SSD? Also why does my Windows SSD partition matter, if I'm installing it on a different drive?

 

[Going Bald]

So I just bought a new 120gb SSD for Mavericks. I have a 2tb HDD which has data on it which I use in windows 8. Will I be able to use this data and store files that I make onto this HDD as well. Or will I only be able to store data on the 120gb SSD? Also why does my Windows SSD partition matter, if I'm installing it on a different drive?

Whether or not you can use the 2Tb drive with OS X depends on how it is formatted. Is it NTFS? If NTFS, OS X can read but not write.

Windows SSD partitioning only matters if Win8 has been installed UEFI (SSD has "Healthy EFI" partition at beginning of drive). If it has, then Chimera can't see the Win8 boot files so you cannot use Chimera as a boot loader. You would need to use Clover.