2 HD's dual boot 98 & NT

[griffinspc]

I have recently added a new HD which is now my W98 "C" (boot) E & F partitions G & H are cd-rom and CD-RW respectfully.

I have the old HD as "D" with no partitions at 6.4 GB. I want to make this an NT drive and be able to use the easiest method to (duel boot) to either W98 or NT at my convenience.

Any suggestions as to FAT / NTFS / boot and partitioning the drive if I use NTFS. I'm pretty good with W9x, networking, etc. but this is my first foray into NT.





------------------
"Finest Kind"

[ceh383]

The easiest way since you already have Win98 installed would be removeable hard drives.
If you use the removeable drives, when you install NT create a primary partition of 1 - 2 gigs, format FAT install onto this partition. Once install is complete you can use the "Disk administrator" to create and format partitions. NTFS provides for better security than FAT. If you use FAT you can convert it to NTFS at a later time, however once it is NTFS the only way back to FAT is to reformat.


------------------
Keyboard error or no keyboard present

Press F1 to continue

[griffinspc]

Interesting. When you say "removable hard drives" you do mean designate just the one drive "D" and it's partitions that NT will be installed on, right? And if so how would I set up the boot process?

Thanks for your reply.

------------------
"Finest Kind"

[ceh383]

Removeable drive bays
These are what I was refering to. You would need two of them, set each drive up as a master, set the BIOS to "Auto Detect".
Doing it this way lets you set each OS up as you want, without messing the other(keeps Win98 safe while learning NT)

------------------
Keyboard error or no keyboard present

Press F1 to continue

[griffinspc]

I see, thanks, I'll have to think about this for awhile.

------------------
"Finest Kind"

[griffinspc]

Making them removeable has an upside but I'm wondering if anyone has a different approach to keeping these 2 drives as separate bootable OS's.

------------------
"Finest Kind"

[ceh383]

Well, other ways to do it?

1-> You could use a third party app like System Commander or Partition Magic (there are other boot managers available) to create the new partition then install NT. You would use the boot manager to switch between OS's.

2-> Start all over, create a 2gb (recommended)FAT16 partition (there workarounds to make it up to 7.8gb) Install Win9x. Then install NT, during the installation create a partition on the second disk install NT there.

hope this makes sense....

------------------
Keyboard error or no keyboard present

Press F1 to continue

[downtime]

www.xosl.org has a free, excellent boot manager.

[griffinspc]

Thanks, downtime. I just downloaded XOSL after reading their site. Looks like the ticket. I'll try it this weekend if i have any brain cells left.

Thanks too, to ceh383. I may be back if it doesn't do what I want and if it does I'll post back so others can get the results of XOSL.


------------------
"Finest Kind"