Topic: Drive partition and operating systems

[Garden Manager]

I want to try partitioning the drive on my old pc (backup pc), so that i can run both windows xp and windows 98 on the same machine.

I understand i have to format the hard drive first to create the two 'volumes' with different file allocation systems to accept a second OS. I have looked up what to do in the help directory of windows, and i thought i had worked it all out (ie that it was possible to do etc). However the machine (or windows xp) will not even let me format the drive, let alone partition it or install another operating system on it.

I guess i am doing something wong but I dont know what. i was wondering if anyone could help me.

I did wonder about forgetting trying to have 2 operating systems, and just changing to Windows 98, but i cant seem to do that either. It tells me to go into Ms Dos mode first, but I cant seem to get the machine to boot up in MS DOS mode! Arrrgh!

I would be gratefull for any help you can offer.

Thanks

[woppa30]

Partitioning a drive is not for the faint hearted. But here are a few things you should bear in mind.
Its difficult o partition or format a drive that you are currently booted off. This means that you will either have to buy / find a free partitioning tool to create a separate partition from your current OS (Win98?) that you can then install winXP (win98) on. If its possible for you it may be easier to wipe the entire hard drive and go from scratch, installing XP onto one partition first, that you create with the windows installer, and then re-installing windwos 98 on the second, unused partition secondly and then restore all your documents.
What sort of size partition are you after, I havea  load of old, smallish (40-80Gb) hard drives that if you pay postage are yours, that way you would have a separate hard drive. Installation would be then just a case of selecting the second hard drive and leaving your current one alone.
If you need any more help just shout.

[Garden Manager]

Thanks for the help.

Now then, I have to think about what is best to do. I think I need more info please:-

Firstly what would be the best tool/software to use to partition the drive as it stands and where can I find it?

Secondly, how would i go about starting from scratch with the existing drive? There is nothing on it except for XP at the moment, I did a clean reinstall of the OS in preparation for this 'operation'.

Thirdly, as far as a second drive goes, I have an older, now defunct PC with windows 98 installed, but nothing else. It is smaller in capacity, but would it be worth taking it out of the unit it is in and installing it into the younger PC as a second drive? Would this be easy to do - I have some familiarity with the inside of the PCs in question.

Finaly on the subject of a secondhand drive (from you?) what sort of postage/other costs are we looking at?

Sorry to be a nuisance, I just need to weigh up the options and decide whats worth doing. Thanks, I look forward to your reply.

[Barnowl]

When I got a new PC I was annoyed to find that the two disks I had carefully opted for had been formatted as one partition. after many calls to tech support, it was established that it was impossible to change this without wiping everything and starting a reinstall to a blank hard disk(s) (and then choosing the partition options as part of the new install). It wouldn't even let me boot off a CD or floppy so I couldn't fdisk it. Used be able to do all this in Windows 2000 and Windows NT without trouble.

To cut a (very long ) story short, gave up and bought another disk for £30, so my advice would be the same as Woppa's, to go for the second disk approach.



Incidentally, why the need for Windows 98 - surely one of the worst versions of Windows ever released? :D

[Garden Manager]

Thanks for your message.

What do you mean 'as one partition'? Like two physical drives acting as one single volume?

When I got my latest PC (not the one i want to partition) it came with an 80GB HDD (previous PC has 40GB). Great i thought, loads of space (photos and stuff). Wrong! roughly one third of the physical drive was a second partition used as a system back up and recovery drive, leaving me with not much more than the previous PC (around 60GB). Oh this partition can be removed if space becomes tight on the rest of the drive and that recovery/backup facility is a usefull insurance to have but i still feel a bit short changed. To think you have bought X amount of disk space but in reality you only have Y amount, is a bit annoying.

Why Windows 98? well it could be Win95, but 98 is the more up to date one of the two. basicaly i have a load of software bought for a Windows 95/98 machine, which i still have a use for and see no point paying out a second time to upgrade/replace it. This software simply will not work properly on XP (even in 95/98 compatability mode). So i figured it would be nice to have 95/98 available yet still have the processing power of the faster machine (i have an old machine with98 on it but its so slow compared to up to date machines).

I hope this makes sense.

[Barnowl]

Absolutely makes sense.

Yes, two single drives operating as one volume - never occurred to me they would set it up that way. ???

[Garden Manager]

Tried installing the Win98 HDD from the other PC. Whilst i managed to figure out how to fit it the machine wont accept it - i guess it cant decide which drive to boot from so wont boot from either. If only i could find a way to tell it which drive to boot from, ie which disk is the master and which is the slave. i suppose the second drive needs formatting but if the machine wont boot with it connected then i cant do that either.

Any ideas? I have a MS Dos boot disk (floppy) but i dont know how to use MS DOS!

Thanks

[Larkshall]

If you wish to use a second drive, I would make this suggestion.

Fit the second drive and make "master" as well as the first drive. Modify your power supply to the drives by fitting a two pole two way switch in the line, with the outgoing red wires switched to either first or second drive. To change OS's simply power down, switch over and power up.

[djbrenton]

You may need to set the jumper at the back of the drive to designate it as slave.

[Garden Manager]

Thanks

You just dont know to check these things untilyou ask for help on them

I was wondering if i needed to put the second drive back in the original base unit and format it before i reinstall it as a second HDD, but if all i need to do is make it a 'slave' drive then that would be a simpler solution.

[dtw]

Another way of doing it would be to disconnect the XP disk (temporarily),
put the spare disk in, install win98 + all the drivers etc.
Reconnect your XP disk as master, add the win98 disk as a slave.

Then boot into XP, go into windows explorer, view hidden files and you will
see in the C:\ folder a file called boot.ini , right click on it and untick read only (if it is ticked).
Edit it in notepad,
It will look like...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Then add the following line at the end...

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The 1 may need to be in the rdisk bracket, as I can't try this to see if it works.
It won't do any harm if it is in the wrong one, just restart, select XP and edit the file again.
You may not need the /noexecute=optin /fastdetect bit.

Let us know if it works.