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Designing 5 OS Multiboot : HELP

B

BlueIce

Senior member
My current setup is this:
Partition 1 Primary Active: C drive, FAT32, W98SE, 4GB
Partition 2 Extend Logical: D drive, FAT32, data backup, 12GB
+ Unallocated space....

I have been reading up on some of the stuff with multibooting a boatload of OS. But they all seem to have simply 1GB per OS, mostly dual boot setups and very simple setups.

I want to turn my current setup into booting these OS:
98SE
NT4.0 Wks
W2k Pro
W2k Server
Mandrake 7.2

I am in the planning stage. Being a techie, I want to maxiumize performance to the best as possible give my options. I have a 30GB IBM 75GXP HD and want to put everything on this one drive. This is the setup that I am thinking of:

(I will be using W98SE and W2K SRV mostly)
-----------------------------------------------------------
1st Partition: FAT16, 500MB Primary Partition: nothing but bootfiles and Swapfiles for W98 and W2K SRV
2nd Partition: FAT32, 4GB of W98SE Logical Partition: W98se OS
3rd Partition: NTFS, 2GB of NT4.0 Logical partition: NT4 OS
4th Partition: NTFS, 3GB of W2k Pro logical partion: W2K OS
5th Partition: NTFS, 6.5GB of W2k Srv logical partition: W2K Srv OS
6th Partition: LIN_EXT2, 1.5GB of Mandrake7.2 logical partition: Linux OS
7th Partition: LIN_SWAP, 100MB of Linux Swap logical partition: Linux swap
8th Partition: FAT32, 12GB of backup data, mp3s, etc. logical partition.

First of all, I am not sure if this is possible, as I am a little unclear of the 1024 cylinder rule. W98 OS will start at 500MB mark, NT4 will start at 4.5GB mark, W2K Pro will start at 6.5GB mark, W2K SRV will start at 9.5GB mark, Mandrake will start at 16GB mark.

The 1024th cylinder rule is ~7.5GB mark. So will W2K SRV and mandrake boot? I am a little confused here... The reason for the 500MB FAT16 at the beginning of is because of NT4.0 will not work with FAT32 systems of W98 at the beginning of the drive.

I am thinking that because there is a FAT16 active primary partition at the begining of the drive, it will allow ALL OS to dump bootup files there so that the bootup files will tell the system where that OS is located so 1024th cylinder rule would not apply. So i.e, I can install NT4.0 at a partition begining at the 20GB mark.....Is this right?

Install order? (thinking of just installing in this order: W98, NT4, W2K Pro, W2K SRV, Mandrake)
Where do you put your application files? (on OS or backup partition, which is best?)
Any other recommendations for putting into this setup?

Help! Have to clear this up before I can begin the next steps of reorganizing my HD space. If it helps, I have the following software: Partition Magic 6, BootMagic, System commander 2000.
 
Please read up on NT4 installation requirements.

It needs to be on a partition that begins AND ENDS before the 1024 cylinder cap!

Your choice of PM 6.0 is good.
 
why would anyone want to install that many OS's? i didnt know about the nt4 needing to begin and end before the 1024 cylinder cap. i too love partition magic. good luck with this.
 
Suggest that you get a 2nd HD & make it independantly bootable. Then if the primary HD has a boot failure, you can go into bios, change boot order, and boot from 2nd HD to make repairs.
Also, in order to set up Win98 AFTER Win2000, use: "setup /ntldr" from command prompt.
 
Get System Commander...designed for this type of crap.

I have win95, win98m winME, winNT 4.0, and win2000 on a test system at work using system commander...seems to work really nice. I've seen guys who have all the above plus Linux and BeOS installed too.
 
i have a win 98se, win2k, beos, whistler multi boot, and can actully boot to yet another 98se with a switch in the bios, and will be slipping in a linux someday.


OK just looked at your setup you want to try, I have a 98se on my first 500mb, but its tight, and I have 196mb ram.. maybe bump your first part up to 750mb, and drop the 98se altogether, if you've got the ram,
you could squeeze the nt4 onto 1.5 gb, and still be pretty functional, and drop the pro down to 1.75gb, then the server partition as same, and linux as far up as possible, plus i had a few spare partitions in different formats for data only, like an 8gb fat32, and an ntfs, Also throw beos on there, that will probly be the trickiest, i got mine working quite well, and since it can see linux and ntfs, and no password problems, you can use it for emergency recove.

the trick to beos, is you can install it from windows, onto a partition, then you need to boot from a floppy to get into it, then it looks like its installed fine, but it isn't. theres an install option in the beos menu, from their you install it to the final partition, then use bootpart (by booting to dos from the 98se install) [this is presuming you installed first 98se, then win2k server, after setting up the partitions] to find, and grab the nt bootloader info. also if you need to boot beos off a udma 66 card, PM me.
For now do everything off a udma 33, till you get it final. Once you have beos accessible from the boot menu, on its final partition, you can format the first and use it for your needs, and disable, in all your NT Os's, view or access ability of the final boes partition. its propritary,
And you don't want to have windows offering to format it.


Also to add things like a linux and beos, to nt's boot loader, check out bootpart at www.winimage.com
works like a charm.
 
Move Win98 to the end of the OS partitions. Any bootable information Win98 needs will be on C:. The location of D: won't matter.

NT4 may be the only OS that needs to be considered for the 1024-cylinder issue. Mandrake 7.2 and Win2K *shouldn't* balk if they're above that cylinder. You can make a small 50MB /boot partition of Linux below the sacred cylinder if you really want to play it safe; however, I don't think you'll need it.

What's with the OS partition sizes? Why designate different sizes?

-SUO
 
Thanks for the support guys.

KGBMAN: Regarding the 1024th cylinder rule, I found this MS Knownledge base article here. It was a pretty good read on /boot partition, and the /system partition and the 1024th rule. I also found another article on that that dealt with larger HD here. It had a part that talked about a system using the whole 20gb for the NT4 and then after using it for a while of installing a lot of junk on there that when he went to install a new SP, it bombed on reboot, because of the new bootfiles were beyond 1024th cylinder. I haven't had much experience with NT4 but I was wondering if it would work in this case if the user did a defrag before rebooting (thus moving the bott files to the beginning of the drive)????

PLEASE feel free to reply with your experiences

FOBSIDE:

<< i didnt know about the nt4 needing to begin and end before the 1024 cylinder cap. >>

Yeah, its a pain in the arse. NT4 came out b4 any of the new standards came out. The new stds were implemented in W95-OSR2, W98/SE/ME/W2K.

vailr: Only one drive to work with for now. Will consider two for future, tho.

miniMUNCH: I would love to see what kind of a setup you have in terms of # of partitions, the amount of space for each and what type of file system you used for each in detail. From others as well

ArkAoss: Are there any limitations for BEOS on which partition it can be installed in? I might give it a try after I get the others setup up, if there are no limitations... Same as miniMUNCH, whats your setup like?

SUOrangeman: Read your post on multibooting from last year. It didn't deal with NT4 the way it is now. The reason for different OS partition sizes is because of the stuff that might get installed later on. Plus I will be using W98 and W2K SRV mainly so those two will get more space. So even if I didn't move W98, NT4 should be fine as it starts at the 4.5GB mark and ends at the 6.5GB mark??? Same as miniMUNCH, whats your setup like?



Being that at the current situation that NT4 beginnings at 4.5GB and ends at 6.5GB Everything else is fine as there is a 500MB FAT16 partition at the front for all the system files (ntldr,ntdetect,etc) from all the other OS.

I would just like to see how some of your setups are like in detail if you have multiboot with NT4 in the mix.
 
I don't understand why NT4 and WIN2K server if you already have WIN2K Pro, wich is the &quot;NT5&quot; for the home user. I think you are wasting disk space this way.
Use this space to install BeOS, OS/2, WinMe... I don't know... or just keep it for future tweaks.
 
In my experience BeOS can go anywhere and boot fine. Another lesson for other OS makers. (you hear, Torvalds?)
I would keep Linux on a second drive, unless you are very trusting. Even if it doesn't harm your partition table (which I've seen some of the installers do), it's best to have it first on a disk to avoid the 1024 cyl bug, if it is still a bug.
 
Don't have time to think about BeOS or second HD. Can someone please confirm if the setup works or not? If not what do to make it work? Thanks.
 
no probs with beos as to, where, just gave me a little hiccup on a udma 66, make sure ya check out boot part, if you want to stick with the Nt loader. it seems to be priceless, and bsd............. i haven't touched yet personally, but it looks tricky. also, got a spare mb or 2? i heard qnx would fit on a floppy, but looks like mac osx or a good linux.

oh and beos has no commandline, a slight internal one though.
 
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