A rather Complex MultiBoot Scenario--Please help me out????

[thatsright]

Hi Guys. Here is a very interesting Multi-Boot Scenario. I am studding to obtain my Windows 2000 MCSE, and because of this I am going to install 5 different O/S on my PC for practicing. I just bought a new Maxtor 60Gig 7200RPM HD that adds to my 4 year old 6.4Gig HD. This is what I?d like to put on:

Drive C: 500 MB-MS-DOS 6.22 FAT
Drive D: Windows 2000 Advanced Server NTFS 5
Drive E: Windows 2000 Professional NTFS 5
Drive F: Windows 2000 Professional FAT32
Drive G: Windows 98 FAT32
Drive H: Windows NT Server 4.0 NTFS 4
Drive I: Just Data Storage in FAT 16 (for FAT 32 if its compatible with NTFS 5??)

____________________________________________________________
All of this added up = 60gig of HD space for the Maxtor Drive
Plus the separate other physical Seagate HD of 6.4 Gig

Now the reason I?m writing all of this is to ask for some advice on how you folks would divvy up the Logical HD space for each O/S on the Maxtor Drive. Please let me know how much space I should allocate to each drive. For W2K AS, MS-DOS, and NT Server 4.0 I want to keep things to a healthy minimum in terms of HD space allocation as for these 3 O/S?s are just to be used for practice and not really any major apps or data storage. But for W2K Pro in FAT 32 & NTFS and Win 98 will be used at home when I?m not practicing.

Finally, in what order would you install the above O/S?s. I just put them in the order above that seems right to me, but I?m not an expert if it will be fine this way as listed above.

Please help me out with your comments and/or tips.

 

[guaraguao]

The first thing you want to do is make SURE that you install 98 before the nts.
The reason? When 98 installs, it wipes out your MBR (Master Boot Record) without even looking to see if there are any other os's installed. (So, if you didn't have a boot disk made for any of the other os's, you're out of luck.)
If all goes well, nt and w2k should simply update the MBR as they're installed, giving you the option to boot any.

I'd do it in the following order:

500 MS-DOS
1500 Windows 98 FAT32
2000 Windows NT Server 4.0 NTFS 4
2500 W2k professional #1
2500 W2k professional #2
5000 W2k advanced

The numbers on the left are what, in my experience, has been a workable amount of disk space. W2k AS, without IIS installed but with terminal services, takes up ~1.4g. Things have a way of balooning up to the 2g land though, so be wary.
If I were you, I'd put a reasonable amount of space for each os, like I did above, and put the rest of it in a fat32 partition, so you can access it from all the different os'.

Oh yeah, and I would maybe invest in a copy of Partition Magic. 🙂
Get yourself a software package that can readjust partition sizes without wiping all the data out.
(I learned that the hard way... ooh, bad memories.)

Best of luck...
Sebastian


P.S. How come I don't see any linux or *bsd partitions on there?? Shame on you! ;-)

 

[Dyngoe]

Congratulations in your decision to get you MCSE. You may hear that it isn't as important as it once was, but don't believe it. You will get a good job out of it. Now, as for your install, why do you want all these OS on one machine? Sure, you run through all the Win2K series in your exams, but they are one at a time, and you never need 98 or DOS. Start with just two partitions, one fat32 and one ntfs. Put 98 on fat32 and Win2K pro on ntfs. Now, use 98 for gaming and 2K for everything else. This is all you need to finish test 70-210, but I would suggest finding a copy of win2k resource kit cd. Keep your OS simple is my suggestion. When you need server, make a partition with partition magic or something and put it in then.
As Always,
D

 

[igiveup]

Try not to double post guy. Don't need a ton of threads. Good luck though.