Two seperate hard drives, two seperate operating systems.

Discussion in 'Storage Devices' started by ReubenSala, Aug 7, 2006.

  1. ReubenSala

    ReubenSala Geek Trainee

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    Hello. I have a question about two seperate hard drives and two seperate operating systems.

    I want Windows XP on one hard drive and Windows 98 on another, I know you're supposed to install Windows 98 first on a formatted FAT32 hard drive, and then Windows XP on a NTFS, but I have a few questions first.

    Is it possible that I could just take out the drive I have Windows XP on, and put on my other formatted drive and install Windows 98 on it, and then put back on my other hard drive with Windows XP on it? Or will that just make everything crash and burn? If this won't work, I'd like it if someone could please tell me exactly what I should do instead.
     
  2. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    If you want to install an OS on both drives independently, one at a time, without the other present, then you do run into a slight snag. This snag would involve the system only booting to the first hard drive in the boot order. You may be able to toggle the hard drive boot order in BIOS, but that's a little overly complicated.

    The reason you'd install 98 then XP is because XP has a bootloader that will automatically add 98 to the boot options.

    If you'll use hard drive caddies to switch out the drives, then your plan will work out just fine.
     
  3. donkey42

    donkey42 plank

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    yes
    no

    just install XP & 98 as nornal, consider using XP´s bootloader to boot 98 from the primery slave (then you won´t have to swap HDD´s, and possibly damage IDE conections)
     
  4. ReubenSala

    ReubenSala Geek Trainee

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    Heh thanks, but I have another question.

    Now that I have a freshly formatted HD in FAT32, perhaps I could take out my hard drive with XP on it, and then put in my other formatted one as the master drive, install Windows 98 then XP on a different partition, and make my first hard drive with XP on it as a slave drive so I can access all the files without losing them. Is this possible?
     
  5. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    Have you considered running Windows 98 on top of XP using Microsoft Virtual Server 2004 or VMware?

    Just another route you could take
     
  6. donkey42

    donkey42 plank

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    yes, but the FAT32 partition must be primery, active & unhidden, mega´s sugestion is a good idea, why don´t you have a third partition (FAT32, because 98 can´t read NTFS) and use it for storing misc data (like emails) and access that partition from both 98 & XP
     

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