Hi Nigel
My two OS systems required are NT4 and XP. I believe I should load NT4 first and then XP. The Microsoft site says that I should load to two volumes, is that the same as partitioning the HD into two or should/can it be two HD's?
Gareth
Hi There, I wasn't too optimistic about the switch but setting up multiple-boot isn't really that bad. I assume you read
this knowledge base article.
Before all else a Volume is a logical partition on the drive. If a drive has only a single partition, then that is the drive. The system looks at Disk as in Disk 0, Disk 1, Disk 2 etc. depending on the number of physical hard drives installed. A disk may have up to 4 bootable logical partitions. Regardless of disk size no more than 4 on a single disk. Those are volumes. You can have more than 4 volumes but only 4 that are bootable.
Generally speaking, especially with older operating systems like Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 the best way to do it is to install oldest first and then work towards newest, installing each to its own volume. You can also have each volume be a separate hard drive (disk).
I saw where your hard drives are small but installing operating systems like Windows 98 and Windows NT don't require much space while newer operating systems like Vista and Windows 7 require space exceeding 12 GB. Also older systems, well actually prior to Vista use a boot loader called BOOT.INI which is easy to edit, starting with Vista Microsoft went to a boot loader called BCDEDIT.EXE a totally different animal.
If you choose to reformat and create partitions just remember oldest to newest and it should go fine. If you install '98 and then install NT the NT install will see the '98 install on its respective volume and edit its own BOOT.INI to include the '98 install. Or Windows 98 and then XP.
Ron