2 hardrives & 2 operating systems

[ahc142a]

I am a novice so excuse my ignorance.

I have a 3 gig harddrive on which i have linux Redhat 7.0 running. I want to install another 2 gig hardrive as well on which i want Win ME running. So basically i want to create a dual boot system with different OS's on the different hardrives. By the way i do not have access to Partition Magic as that computer is not connected to the internet and it's too big to fit on a floppy.

Do i just attach the other hardrive to the data cable with ME running on it or what ?

PS. will i have format the Linux partition i have already ?


SO how do i go about it then ?

 

[cdogg]

Was ME installed on that computer or a different one? If it was a different one, then the hardware configuration has to be the same for it to work properly (same type of devices like the modem, ethernet card, etc). Otherwise, it might not be able to boot directly from that hard drive initially.

 

[ahc142a]

No i'm not sure what OS is on the 2nd 2 Gig hardrive, but it needs to be formatted either way. At the moment i just have a 3 gig hardrive with Linux Redhat 7.0 on it.

 

[cdogg]

Attach the drive in place of the current one, then boot using a Win98 startup disk to get to a command prompt. There, you can utilize basic DOS commands such as fdisk and format.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Ideally you would want to install the dumbest Operating System 1st, ie Linux after Windows.

If this is not possible, then you will have issues. You don't need an internet connection to run Partition Magic - it fits onto 2 floppies very nicely.

The best bet would be to repartition (using Linux's fdisk - DOS fdisk cannot remove Linux partitions).

My favoured route (although it doesn't have to be done this way);

Carve the 1st disk into 2 partitions, Partition 1 about 100Mb, Partition 2 the remainder.

Make Partition 1 active, and use DOS format to make it FAT32. DON'T format the 2nd partition.

Partition the 2nd drive as you see fit, and format it.

Install Windows ME to the 2nd hard drive.

Install Linux to the unpartitioned space, using the installer to customise the partition.

I hope this helps