Bootit NG? Great program but I access my second drive?

[PrayingMantus]

I have setup a multiboot system with the Bootit NG software, found here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/.

(Similar to partition magic). Problem is that I can't access my second drive in windows xp. I can see it but cant access it or any of its partitions. I know the drive works fine & detecs fine in the bios, when using the Bootit NG program I can see the drive and create new partitions etc. I think that my problem is not fully knowing how the Bootit NG software works - it doesn't exactly hold your hand. Has anyone used this software? Is there a setting that I need to select?

I appreciate any help..

 

[wolluf]

boot managers often hide partitions other than the boot partition (there are various reasons for this - though you don't really need to do it if booting XP) - but there it should be configurable & it should tell you in the documentation.

PS. You might want to try

http://www.boot-us.com

as an alternative - partition hiding is turned oof by default - and its part of the configuration process when you set up the boot menu.

 

[PrayingMantus]

The partitions are not hidden, as that is one of the options, I can see the drive in xp (i) but it is not accessable & when I click on it xp asks me to fromat the drive.

My Drives are 1X36Gb SATA & 1X 120Gb IDE. I know for a fact that the drive (120Gb) is working properly & that it is detected properly because on one of the partitions has Mandrake on it which I can boot into. I have details below of the disk information as read in Bootit NG:

SATA DRIVE

HD 1
.................Partition.............HPTS/NTFS
......................"................Extended
....................Vol................HPTS/NTFS
......................"...................."
......................"...................."
................Partition..............Bootit EMBRM

IDE DRIVE

HD0
................Partition...........HPTS/NTFS
......................".............Linux Native
......................".............Extended
.....................Vol............Linux Swap/Solaris
.................Partition..........Extended
.....................Vol............FAT-32
......................."............HPTS/NTFS
......................."................"
......................."................"
......................."................"
......................."............Free space

I know the easy way out is to ditch the program but I really like this program & it's the best I have found - much better than partition magic.

 

[seanform]

Hello. I use XOSL...Extended Operating System Loader. First I partition a HD. It is important that you make the partitions you like to boot from as primary. Than I install XOSL from a floppy drive in dos. I put Win 98, XP, 2000, doS only ...anything you like on each primary partition than I just craete a booting menu with XOSL. If you like to download XOSL just search for it in google or yahoo.

 

[wolluf]

PrayingMantus - could you access the second hard drive before you installed bootit?

I don't quite understand the bootit print out - how many partitions/logical drives are there on the 120GB drive?

 

[PrayingMantus]

I created all the partitions on the 120Gb IDE Drive using Bootit NG. According bootit NG, I assume I have 2 X primary & 2 X extended, & 7 X logicals or Volumes on HD0.

 

[ObiDad]

PrayingMantis, I have bootit ng, and even though bootit says it has formatted the drive to ntfs, winxp still asks me to format that partition. I do the format, and everything works fine.

 

[PrayingMantus]

Thanks a lot for all the help guys, I found the problem. I set up most of the partitions as primaries and xp didn’t like that, so I changed it to 1X primary, 1X Extended, & all the rest logicals - which is what fdisk does & now it works fine. Don’t know how it’s going to go when I try to install a couple of Linux distros on some of the partitions, but all should go OK. Thanks again.

Tell me ObiDad - do you like bootit? how long you been useing it for?

 

[wolluf]

PrayingMantus - I did try out bootit in an earlier incarnation several years ago (it was too complicated/unstable for my needs - ended up with boot-us, linked above) - I'd forgotten its got its own 'partition overlay' feature (so you can far exceed the normal limits - which if you don't know are max 4 primary partitions per disk or 3 primaries & 1 extended (which can be subdivided into logical drives). The thing is - only bootit can manage the partition structure if you exceed normal limits. In my experience, this doesn't make for a stable system - particularly with multi-booting (given the problems you can have with operating systems overwriting other's boot sectors etc). I always use primary partitions for operating systems (apart from linux, which when I do install it, I let do its own thing). With 2 hard drives, you've got room for a fair few o/s just using normal partitioning (unless you're going for a mega installation of course!) - I've got 6 on mine (was 8).

So, my advice is to stick to normal partitioning - unless you have pressing reasons for up to 200 partitions - it makes multibooting much more stable.