Suggestions dual boot XP, WIN 2K

[I_W]

Your suggestions??

• Fast WD 120GB 8MB cache drive
• ZIP drive in a rack
• Two CD-R/W burners, one fast and DVD reader, one slow
• Possibly a 6 or 40 GB additional drive.
• Maxtor AT/100 PCI 4 device IDE controller

I'd like to dual boot XP and WIN 2K.

I had no problem using the PCI controller for the boot drive with WIN 2K on a 40 GB drives. But when I boot the WIN 2K CD to do a repair it doesn't recognize a drive on the PCI controller so all is not perfect using it.

What about something like two 30 GB partitions, one with WIN 2K and one with XP and the rest, 60GB, as a large data partition? Or perhaps an additional smaller partition with stuff that I should back up - maybe to the 6 or 40 GB drive. Also perhaps a very small partition on the 6 or 40 GB drive formatted as a FAT 32 partition so I can if I want to plug a WIN 98 formatted drive into the rack and access common data?

I want the rack for the IDE ZIP drive so I can use it in another computer at a remote site as well form time-to-time.

So, your suggestions for:

• IDE channels on the motherboard IDE controller
• IDE channels on the PCI ATA/100 controller
• What will be fastest? What where? Master/Slave?
• Should I consider a third party boot manager?
• Cautions and your experiences? - I don't wnat to reinvent the wheel!

[EvilRick]

I would only use about 4GB each for the OS partitions. FAT32 for 9X and NTFS for 2K/XP.

Make another partition of about 8GB for APPS, you'll have to have different directorys for each OS; 9XAPPS, 2KAPPS, XPAPPS ...

I have a shared directory of 2GB that has shared stuff, like Temporary Internet Files, Temp, Downloads- are moved to permanent storage if I want to keep them.

When you install, you'll want to do 9X first, then 2K and then XP. You can do 9X last, you'll just have to do a "Recovery Console" and repair the bootloader to get back 2K and XP.

As far as "Recovery Console" not seeing your drive, did you load the drivers during the boot up; it should have said "F6 to load...".

[I_W]

I suspect you're right about drivers, I hadn't thought about it. I think I put in the CD and walked away and came back later. I moved the drive to the primary motherboard IDE controller as master and it worked then as one would expect.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Bopper]

I-W-- depends on how you want to uuse this...
Are you setting up the dual boot to play with Win 2k, and XP to attain Certs?
If so I would do NTFS so you can play with Permissions, and such, but if it is just to have it on the drive, and to be able to copy files from one OS to the other you want to make them all Fat32.

<Edit>
Oops, I really need to read all the way through before I go posting...

IDE channels on the motherboard IDE controller

IDE channels on the PCI ATA/100 controller -
is the MBD controller Ultra something? if the controller card is faster I would use that. Also with An altra ATA controller card you can add 4 HDD's rather than just 2 on the MBD IDE channel.
I have never heard of the order of the drives opn the controller going faster or slower, but I would imagine that it will only go as fast as your slowest component.
Since a 5400rpm drive cannot keep up with a 7200rpm drive the 7200 rpm drive will have to slw to the level of the slower one.

What will be fastest? What where? Master/Slave? See above

Should I consider a third party boot manager? I don't think you need it. Win 2k has one with the boot.ini that works just fine.
I have dual booted many machines with no problems. you can change the boot order in Win 2k, and XP

Cautions and your experiences? - I don't wnat to reinvent the wheel!

If you install Win NT make sure that is your first OS installed, but after that it really doesn't matter what is next.
I usually go in order 98, 2k, XP

[I_W]

Thanks for the thoughst, Bopper.

Yup, the PCI controller is an ultra ata/100 rather than the 66 on the motherboard. Speed isn't all that big an issue but if it's available by just putting things in the right order and on the right controller and pairing master and slave right I'd like to do that to get the advantage of it.

I am right now dual booting XP and WIN 2K. XP because of the hassle I had losing contact with the CD drives when I removed CD Creator and I stuck XP on a 6 GB drive that I'd been using 98 on. I've used 2K for a year or more and thought I'd drop back to 98 from time to time but never ever did. Just kept one volume FAT 32 so I could at least get to it from a 98 drive plugged into one of my racks. Or even from DOS??? (What's that?)

I want some hands on with XP just for the experience. I'm not interested in certification, having taken several cert classes in everything from Netware to NT about 5 years ago and realized how stupid the exams were and how poorly they tested knowledge I decided I didn't need to participate in that as my work was mostly in an educational setting. I understand the testing may be more valid now but at that time they were obviously only a money machine for the companies running the "tests."

Hey, I even installed NT Server on a 486 DX/2 66 clone generic machine when the Microsoft rep gave me a CD and suggested playing with it. He was hoping for a large sale but I went with Netware which was much more cost effect for a college at the time. Little did I know that putting NT on a non approved 486 clone wasn't supposed to be easy or even possible in some cases but I just followed the directions as they appeared on the screen and used it as a Macintosh print and file server for several months with 45 Macs on it while I was "testing it." I showed a student aid how to manage it and never had to touch it after that until we got up a true Appleshare server on a faster box.

From what the responses have been so far it sounds as though I should just format the drive and see what I can do about copying my WIN 2K boot drive to it. I may actually have to learn how to use ghost if the generic WD or Maxtor drive cloning software that I've used in the past doesn't work as easy as it did a few years ago. I have Partition Magic 6.0 so I can adjust partition size after I get WIN 2K on the large drive if I need to do it that way and then install XP on the next partition.

Thanks for your suggestions and thoughts.