Running 2 different OS's on seperate hard-drives

[Aero]

Ok, here's the deal:

I've just finished building a new system to replace my aging gaming rig. The new one is running WinXP, and the old one has Win98. While the XP system is fine for the newer games, I'd still like keep Win98 around for playing the classics.

So, I'd like to take the old hard-drive and put it into the new system. Preferably without having to reformat and reconfigure the thing. (I've got lots of files on the old drive that I'd like to keep)

I've been doing some reading about dual-booting 2 OS's on the same drive, but haven't found much information about what I want to do. Can someone please give me some pointers on how to do this?

Could I just remove the old hardware profiles from the device manager on the old system, set it as a slave- and pop it into the new system and boot to it seperately? Then reconfigure the new hardware to the old drive?


As always, your advice is greatly appreciated!

[mr.jiggyfly]

I had the same problem and just went at it the newbie approach. I used Partitionmagic, which came with boot magic. Boot magic gives you a menu when you startup promping you to choose the os you want to boot.

[Bill in SD, CA]

How can I install Windows 98 after Windows XP?

HOW TO: Create a Multiple-Boot System in Windows XP

Bill

[Aero]

Thanks for the advice, and the links... but I think maybe you guys misunderstood my intentions...

My new sys has a 120Gb drive formatted with the NTFS file system, my old sys has a 20Gb drive which is FAT32- both drives are Ultra ATA/100.

At this point, I cannot load Win98 on a seperate partition on the NTFS drive- because Win98 uses FAT32.


I want to have both drives in the new computer, the 120Gb with XP on it- and the 20Gb with Win98 on it. And, I want to be able to boot to either one as needed.

Is it possible?

Thank you!


Aero (the dual hard-drive dummy)

[John Prophet]

I am sure its possible....but usually you install windows 98 FIRST and then WinXP.

Normally you would start with the 20g and install win98..then when you installed xp it would give you the option to pick which drive etc to install on.....then it would setup all the dual boot stuff itself.


The issue with setting up w98 second is that it might overwrite the xp master boot record stuff and xo wont boot anymore without some minor surgery.


So, other than that I dont know what else to tell you, lol. Sorry.

But, I am sure its do-able. Do some google searches for "xp dual booting"...also microsoft probably has lots of info on their site.

[iseeu_3]

i did just that (with win2k and xp pro) without knowing it. i had 2 hdd's, both 80gig's and the primary drive had win2k on it and i was wanting to install xp pro over this one and it installed it on the other drive instead. no big deal to me but when i turn on my computer it asks me if i want to boot to xp or 2k. so i have the dual boot thing going on two different drives like you said you wanted but it's not 98'. i don't know if it's the same way or not. i would just put the xp cd in while your in the gui and click install and i think it automatically install it to an empty drive if it see's another os (windows of course) but i would choose full install. of course this may just be for pro, i don't know if you have pro or home so i couldn't say.

HTH,

<shad>

[Gettinbye]

It is possible. You can use a manual switch, or load partition magic (as it will not allow 2 visible active primary partitions at any given time) and bootmagic as the loader. One thing to note, however, is that there are inherent complications in running 2 O/S's on two hdds on the same system, not the least of which is that some software (or user intervention)may inadvertently allow sharing of the root directories of the hard drives, resulting in data corruption and/or loss. Not to say that it would be a certainty, just an unnecessary possibility.
Personally I would create a fat32 partition (with partition magic)as the first partition of the 120g drive and put 98 on it using driveimage(and set your boot options with bootmagic). Then you'd have your 20g drive (as long as the filing system was fat32) to share files between the two O/S's.
Just my .02

[Aero]

Well, now we're getting somewhere!

Personally, I would have thought this to be an easy task. I understand that WinXP can be finicky about having 98 loaded after it, but certainly didn't think it would matter with 2 separate drives. I guess I never thought about the 2 drives possibly sharing files- or a conflict with the MBR. (this is the master boot record stored in the BIOS- right?)

OK, so how about if I have both drives installed- and disable the one I don't want to use at that time in the BIOS at start-up. Could the MBR be re-written each time for each drive?

Sound like it might work?

Thanks!


Aero (still relatively clueless about such things)


Perhaps it would be much easier just to LAN both systems?
(I would prefer not to tear down this XP build if I can help it)

[bombledmonk]

There are switches available out there for just your purpose. I'm not sure where to get one at the moment but it is a simple(well sorta) toggle switch that has both hard drives into it and one ide ribbon coming out.

[wju425]

If you are using two separate drives each with their own os and files then use the boot order in bios to choose which drive you want to boot. Both drives have to be masters (on primary and secondary ides). At least I think they do.

\o/ Billy