A bit of a Quandry

[dynamictiger]

I am not a hardware person, I only understand hardware from what I read in the magazines and can recognise a hard drive and RAM stick and so on on site. But that is as far as my interest goes.

So generally I wander down to my computer store when things go bang, kaboom, or just aren't right in the hardware.

I also go and see them with my new machine requests. Now I am confused.

I would like to set up a ghosted machine running Windows 98, Win 2000 and Win XP. The shop tells me that as the formats are different I can't do it. I would have thought with multi hard drives I could do it.

Please can I have a better explanation?

 

[skiflyer]

You can do it with one harddrive if you like, long as it's big enough... and you're right, you can do it with multiple harddrives. As long as you have a partition for each, the rest is easy.

The ghosted portion really has nothin to do with it though.

 

[wolluf]

You can do it with one two or three hard drives.

With one drive, easiest to set up (ignoring stuff like independence of each operating system) is

1. Create partition (fdisk) for 98, leaving space for 2k/XP. Install 98 on it.

2. Boot from 2k install CD, create partition with its tools leaving space for XP, and install.

3, Boot from XP install CD, create partition in remaining space & install.

All done.

Note - Use Fat32 for the 2k/XP partitions if you want 98 to be able to see them.

 

[ceh4702]

Personally, I do not understand the practicality or the need to have a multiple boot machine like this. Having 3 OS's on one computer is a bit much. I do realize that some hardware like scanners or some software that worked in Win98 or some other OS may not work in other operating systems which can cause a dilemna. However, having 3 OS's on one system is just making that system even more vulnerable to attack.

You may want to use some kind of Boot Management software so you can control what Operating system will boot and so that each operating system is completely isolated from the other 2. XP Can probably read the file systems of the other 2 and could infect them if it got a virus. Win98 normally is not be able to access the file system of the other 2.

Probably the best way to do this is to use 3 hard drives. You could easily have 3 hard drives and one optical drive. If you had a motherboard that had the option of SATA Raid with the JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) option then you could install them quite nicely. I could easily see 2 drives used or even one larger drive. They make quite large drives now adays. However, if you put them all on one drive, then if that drive fails all 3 operating systems are gone.

You might be better off making 2 or 3 computers and hooking them up with KVM to one keyboard and monitor. That might cost too much also. However, all 3 might be able to be running all the time if you use this method.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[BadBigBen]

Hi there,

as mentioned before, yes it can be done... follow the installlation advice given before, ie. first 98, then 2k, then XP and it will work...

Ceh4702 - it's as you mentioned a COST factor... one machine three OS's is cheaper than 3 machines...

Ben

PS - I had at one time 5 diff OS on one maschine... 98se, 2k, xp-pro, linux and AmigaOS... now only three, XP-pro, Linux and AmigaOS... all works fine...

 

[dynamictiger]

Thank you all for your advice. I cna now go to my store with a bit more knowledge than before.

I use this machine for testing software, hence my requirement for various os.