Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 41595 2004-01-15 23:22:00 Duel boot Part 2 stu140103 (137) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
207787 2004-01-15 23:22:00 Hello every one :)

This question is in relation to this thread: Hard drive size's (pressf1.pcworld.co.nz)

As I said in the above thread I what to Duel boot between Win XP & ME but things have changed,

Now I am going to talk my dad in to let me Duel boot between XP & ME on 2 different partitions (XP on the first partition & ME on the 2nd partition, then at a latter date drop the Win ME partition)

Can that be done?????

Now the 2nd bit

I have a 10 GB hdd with Win ME, what I what to happen is with an hdd copy program is to copy the entree contacts of my 10 GB hdd over to my new 40 GB hdd, but not too the first partition but to the 2nd partition, Can this be done????

I hope I expand every thing clearly, if not say so & I will try clear it up :) 		stu140103 (137)
207788 2004-01-15 23:30:00 partition magic should let you copy a partition from one hd to another Megaman (344)
207789 2004-01-15 23:44:00 > partition magic should let you copy a partition from
> one hd to another

but the thing is I DONT have any partition on my 10 GB hdd 		stu140103 (137)
207790 2004-01-15 23:51:00 Hi stu140103,

There's an order to how the OS should be installed, usally older ones come first, but that only applies if WinXP is going to be using NTFS. WinME has to come first because it cannot access NTFS partitions as it uses FAT32.

I had done this in my own experience but with Win2k and WinXP both NTFS, WinXP was being trialled but I didn't want to completely switch over until it was stable. I had Win2K on one partition and WinXP on another, C Drive = Win2K, D Drive = WinXP.

When I thought it was time to remove Win2K, I left the boot startup files on C Drive, altered the boot.ini file to just boot WinXP, and manually deleted Win2K files to free up space on that drive.

C Drive now had free space I could use and XP still worked, in the end however, I decided I didn't like how the drive was organised, so I backed up everything I needed, destroyed all partitions and set it up to my liking, having WinXP system files on C Drive. It meant reinstalling everything.

The problem I see is the boot information has to reside on the first partition, it also has to be able to be read for both OS. When you want to remove it, you have two choices, completely format it, and reinstall or delete the unneccessary files and alter the boot.ini as required.

Now to try and answer the other questions.

You can copy the entire contents of your 10GB drive over to the 40GB drive, as long as the space is enough to suit what you want. It will however not be bootable. As you need boot information to reside on C Drive.


Noel Nosivad 		Noel Nosivad (389)
207791 2004-01-15 23:54:00 stu140103,

You do have a partition on your 10GB drive, every drive requires a partition, your 10GB seems to have only 1 Partition which is for the whole of the 10GB drive.

Partitions outline the regions of where data can be written too, without it, your system would not understand the layout of your drive and would not know if it was writing to the drive or to an imaginery sector.


Noel Nosivad 		Noel Nosivad (389)
207792 2004-01-16 00:27:00 > There's an order to how the OS should be installed,
> usally older ones come first, but that only applies
> if WinXP is going to be using NTFS. WinME has to
> come first because it cannot access NTFS partitions
> as it uses FAT32.

I think I will be using FAT32 for both OS, unless my dad says to use NTFS ( I hope he does not!)

> You can copy the entire contents of your 10GB drive
> over to the 40GB drive, as long as the space is
> enough to suit what you want. It will however not be
> bootable. As you need boot information to reside on
> C Drive.

Ok, I think I get what you mean, so to make the 2nd partition (win me) bootable I just need to edit the boot.ini on the 1st partition (Win XP) to tell it to choose between the two OS correct? 		stu140103 (137)
207793 2004-01-16 00:27:00 > When I thought it was time to remove Win2K, I left
> the boot startup files on C Drive, altered the
> boot.ini file to just boot WinXP, and manually
> deleted Win2K files to free up space on that drive.
>
> The problem I see is the boot information has to
> reside on the first partition, it also has to be able
> to be read for both OS. When you want to remove it,
> you have two choices, completely format it, and
> reinstall or delete the unneccessary files and alter
> the boot.ini as required.

Ok cool, I think I will just when the time comes I will edit the boot.ini file do it the easy way. ;) :) 		stu140103 (137)
207794 2004-01-16 00:41:00 Sorry stu140103,

It's quite hard to explain. WinME how it sits on the 10GB drive, has the boot files on it because it's the 1st partition and only partition on that drive. That makes the drive bootable. All boot files must reside on the first partition of any drive for it to be bootable as well as being in the first sector of the drive, which you don't really need to understand just yet.

If copying WinME over to the 2nd Partition of the other drive, the n that drive won't be bootable until you install XP to the first partition, which would create the boot files needed, or the bootfiles from WinME were copied over to the first sector of the first partition of the drive.

Because your method suggests WinXP before WinME I'm not sure of how the outcome would be. I do believe XP will find WinME when copied over, so it seems it looks good, but as long as XP is using FAT32

You do know what the advantages of NTFS is over FAT32?

When XP is installed on the first partition during the setup it should tell you whether it encountered another version of Windows, this is a good sign that it'll now setup a bootloader so that you can alternate between which operating system you would like to run.


Noel Nosivad 		Noel Nosivad (389)
207795 2004-01-16 00:45:00 Hey stu140103,

Well if you successfully get WinXP to find WinME from the first partition then all is well because XP's boot files would reside on the first partition, which is all that is needed to make a bootable drive. You could later on just format the second drive and not worry about losing boot files as it's all on C Drive.

You format the drive, edit your boot.ini file to remove the line that lets you choose whether you want to boot XP or WinME and that is it, you should not be prompted by the bootloader screen that lets you choose which OS you want. This will be like WinME never existed.


Noel Nosivad 		Noel Nosivad (389)
207796 2004-01-16 00:49:00 What I would do is install the 10GB drive as the slave, then install XP on the 40 GB. It should recogise that ME is there, or at least you can modify it's .ini file to do so. That will be safer than "copying partitions". (I'm assuming that the 10GB's ME was installed on that machine ... it's not a good idea to run an OS on a machine other than the one it was installed on. :D) Graham L (2)
1 2 3