2 Hardrives, partition 1 of those & 2 OS per partition

[Impulz]

Sorry for the wasted time in any one involved helping me out with the thread below
(http://www.computerforums.org/showthread.php?p=163337#post163337)

Forget all that and see if you can comprehend this one as its probaly much easier to my knowledge and according to a few tech guys, they say this is a quick and easy alternative. (not to me obviously, not educated enough )

I have 2 physical hardrives in my PC, botht un-partioned.
1x Seagate 127GB(supposed to be a 160GB but showing 127) (drive C
1x Western Digital 40GB (drive D

Im trying to:

-Add a second partition to C: (the 127GB Seagate) preferably half
-Than put xp pro on that new partition aswell
-Once accomplished, i want an option as to which of those 2 OP Systems i wish to boot into upon turning on my PC (its called a boot menu isnt it?)
-Leave the 40GB WD the way it is for data storage

If someone could give me a step by step procedure on how to go about this, i will than print it out and go my best. (If it means reformatting, than thats no issue, as ive just done that and have all my stuff backed up + this is my experimental PC)

All help deeply appreciated

Pat.

 

[Tommy Boy]

yeah, you'll have to reformat the c: drive in order to partition it. and to have two os's on one drive, all you'll need is a boot manager. A good one is called Grub.....hope this helps a little.

 

[catalyst1]

If I were you, I'd consider using the 40GB for the operating systems and 160GB for storage. You don't need a lot of room for the OSs, and if you have a lot of music or video, 40GB will fill up quite fast.

 

[per]

See here for mosaddique's hard drive page to solve the 127 GB limit problem. You need SP1 or SP2 for it. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mosaddique/Working with Large Hard Drives.html

 

[per]

After you get the above done format and partition the disk and install the O/S you want before installing XP. Xp will then create the dual boot.ini file to allow boot choices. Be aware regardless of which partition you install XP to the boot files for it will always be on C: drive.

 

[lurkswithin]

ok first thing first, You need to make the xp the 'c' drive first and I would just swap the jumpers around and the hdd on the ide cables. Save you some time that way. Once you have that done then you can go into disc management and partition and format the larger drive. It is only reading 127 because xp doesn't see anything over 132gigs until you get the patch that is included with SP2 or you download it seperately from M$. the difference between the 127 and 132 is just how the disc is read so don't worry about that. I would partition the drive with nothing larger than 40/50 gigs per partition as this will save you later on in wear and tear of the drive(and speed you up some also. Then use the other partitions as storage and/or backup.
back on track here.... once xp is on the 'c' drive then you can just install the pro version on another partition and the built in boot manager will take care for you.

 

[lurkswithin]

afternoon per!

 

[per]

Afternoon lurkswithin.
See here for the MS setup for dual boot. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/multiboot.mspx

 

[lurkswithin]

Man I got to get organized, I can't find anything any more. That is the one I was looking for (from the comp.net) discussion about the 4 partition rule. Had it misnamed.
Good looking out there!.

 

[Impulz]

-Tommy boy - Ive tried partitioning during my reformat but was unsuccessful, i tried creating a new partition on the blue screen when you reformat by pressing the a key on the keyboard when it asks youto and nothing would happen, how do you do this?

-spanfusion - Im using an older 1.8 pent 4 with only 512 SD Ram on it, i would of assumed the newer seagate 160 GB would be better to run windows on as everything would run faster, as thats also where all my programs will be on, id rather leave it on teh 160?

-per- thnx for that info, will be reading very shortly....

-per- once again, i tried that upon my last reformat, but dont know exactly how to do it

-lurkwithin- The XP drive which i boot up from now is C: and i just changed the drive letter order so taht when i partition the C: it will be in this order: C: (half of the 160 GB)
D: other half of the 160
E:The 40 gig Western Digital
F: DVD burner
G:CD Rom

Regarding going into disc managment and creating a partition from there, well how do i do it? lol ive never done it from there? (and are you talking about doing all this like spanfusion suggested(partitioning the 40GB and using the 2 OS on it? caus id rather do it with the 160GB)



-per- Thnx for that info, reading up now

Thnx everyone, allready learned a lot of new ideas!!

PS Someone mentioned that PARTITION MAGIC will solve all of this automaticly, should i give this a crack too?