Dual Boot - Fat16 or Fat32

[EagleKeeper]

Under NT4 the primary boot partition had to be Fat16 and NT could not be work with FAt32.

I know that W2k can work with Fat32.

Question is can the boot partition be Fat32 or must it be Fat16.

MS website has conflicting info.

I need confirmation of boot setup ASAP

Thanks.

 

[c0rv1d43]

If you mean the system partition (where the boot loader lives), then Win2K can handle FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS. But I wouldn't use anything other than NTFS unless I was multi-booting with other operating system(s) that couldn't see NTFS.

- Collin

 

[audiophan]

fat16? ewwwwwwww

 

[Shack70]

There is app that lets NT4 read/write fat32. It works great.

 

[Nothinman]

fat16? ewwwwwwww

I hope you mean FAT in general, because FAT16 and FAT32 and almost exactly the same.

 

[EagleKeeper]

I believe that Collin has the answers that I was looking for. Please confirm

Scenario is that both W2K and Win98 will be hosted and need to be dual booted.

If the primary partition is Fat32, both OS can be booted from it.

The reference to Fat16 was that is the olden days (before MS became to arrogant and bloated)
NT4.0 could not boot from a Fat32 partition.

I wanted to confirm that W2K could boot. I knew that the beta could read Fat32 but unsure if it would boot from Fat32.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Fat32 works great as the W2K boot partition. I prefer to dual-boot using separate C: partitions for W2K and W98SE though (using PMagic to create 2, Booot Magic to switch between). That way neither "knows" about the other and a bad install like Roxio or Pool of Radiance can only trash one OS not both. With separate partitions there's no reason not to use NTFS for the W2K C:.

 

[FOBSIDE]

i like NTFS but if one of your OS's cant see NTFS it sucks. if you wanna choose between those two, FAT32 is the way to go.

 

[Whitneymuse]

I think I'm getting the hang here; If I'm using PMagic 6.0, I'll install XP in it's "own" C: partition next to the 98 C:....ok, if I made the the XP's partition a "NTFS" one, and I wanted to run applications that will be used by "both" 98 and by XP, (the majority of the apps are on FAT32 and on let's say a "K:" partition...all the apps reside on K: ), is it OK to have the XP on the NTFS and accessing the apps on K:, K: being FAT32? Thanks ahead for any comments....

 

[c0rv1d43]

Hello, Whitneymuse,



<< I think I'm getting the hang here; If I'm using PMagic 6.0, I'll install XP in it's "own" C: partition next to the 98 C:....ok, if I made the the XP's partition a "NTFS" one, and I wanted to run applications that will be used by "both" 98 and by XP, (the majority of the apps are on FAT32 and on let's say a "K:" partition...all the apps reside on K: ), is it OK to have the XP on the NTFS and accessing the apps on K:, K: being FAT32? Thanks ahead for any comments.... >>



Just as a quick warning about a couple of issues your comments raise...

First of all, let me place a disclaimer here. I don't believe in using Partition Magic or any other third party partition management software with Microsoft operating systems unless it's absolutely necessary. It just adds complexity to an already complex-enough system. Yes, I know it may appear to make things simpler for the end user, but it really increases the number of things that can go wrong. Now, on to your comments...

PM 6.0 is not a program you want to use with Windows XP, particularly if you are formatting the Windows XP partition using NT file system (NTFS). You'll need a later (the latest) version of PM.

In particular I have had to rescue a lot of data from systems which were set up with more than one "C:" drive. In order to accomplish multiple C: drives for the various Microsoft operating systems you have to hide one C: partition from another operating system that thinks that it is on a C: partition. You're messing with something at the most basic level of the operating system's ability to recognize and deal with its own environment -- the place where it "lives".

Microsoft specifically states over and over again that it is a bad idea to try to use the same installation of software in the same location for different operating systems. In truth it doesn't matter when the software consists solely of local executables that don't write to the registry and which don't keep local configuration files. Consider these two simple examples:

1. You install a large, complex program or suite of programs like Microsoft Office in a common location (a third partition as you are suggesting) for two operating systems. The setup procedure makes lots and lots of changes to the registries of both of the operating systems. Now you decide you wish to uninstall your big program. Whatever way you go about it, you'll wind up with left-over debris (even more than usual) in the registry of one of your operating systems.

2. Many programs keep local configuration files in their home directories or in various working directories. The content of those local configuration files will very likely be quite different for each different type of operating system under which it is installed. Such programs will likely behave reasonably well in the last OS to which you installed them, but not so well in the OSes under which they were installed earlier because the configuration files have been overwritten with contents specific to the last installation.

And these are by no means the only possible problems caused by this type of program installation. Hard drive space is cheap. Functionality is important. There's no sense in compromising OS and program functionality for the sake of saving a few hundred megabytes, or even a few gigabytes.

My last word on this is to simply say that, if you learn how to do multi-booting without the use of third party partition and boot management tools you may gain valuable knowledge about the operating systems and the way they really work, especially at boot-time. If you use a third party tool to handle the job you learn (maybe more than you want to know) about the third party tool. I don't care for the word "magic". It implies that you don't have to learn anything. Trust me when I tell you that you'd better learn about whatever tools you use for accomplishing multi-booting. As for me, I'd rather learn about the OS than someone's aftermarket tool. PM (and other programs of its ilk) can be very useful to set up temporary scenarios for testing -- like adding an OS or two to a non-mission-critical system that has already been set up -- when you don't have time to do a full and proper system build from scratch. For use in preparing the multi-booting configuration on a critical system you intend to use long-term -- uh-uh. At least not for me. YMMV.

Good luck with whatever path you take!

- Collin

 

[Whitneymuse]

c0rv1d43, thoughts are noted. I suppose the purest and cleanest is to use another hard drive to isolate the XP OS, altogether. A year ago a friend helped me install my first 7200 rpm drive and we ended up boxing up my 6G 5400 when I installed my second 7200rpm HD. I suppose I could use the spare drive for the experimentation, in isolation.

Ever since then I've familiarized myself with other dual booting schemes, and I prefer using PMagic to those; I'm now very much focused on hearing any comments on the real-life issues of using the same app through separate OS's. I've done so using the same OS on separate partitions and since, of course, each partition's OS is only "active" or not "hidden" when it's expressly designated as the active drive and that drive has its own registry, it has not posed any problems using the same program installation on a third partition. I try to keep as much seperate as possible by isolating the data stream to an independent partition. That kind of manipulation led me to PMagic.

Anyone with real life experience on this kind of scheme, please chime in; I'd like to hear your experience.

 

[c0rv1d43]

<< thoughts are noted. I suppose the purest and cleanest is to use another hard drive to isolate the XP OS, altogether. A year ago a friend helped me install my first 7200 rpm drive and we ended up boxing up my 6G 5400 when I installed my second 7200rpm HD. I suppose I could use the spare drive for the experimentation, in isolation. >>



But the XP OS won't actually be any more isolated (in an operational sense) on a second physical drive than it would be on a separate partition on the same physical drive. It will still have to have its loaders (or the third party utility's loaders) in the first partition on the machine. The only way to truly isolate multiple operating systems from each other on a single x86 PC (of conventional design) is to handle the OS switching in the BIOS by choosing different physical drives to be the boot drives. Kind of clumsy, but it would work and provide true isolation at boot time, though the operating systems would still be able to access the other physical drive's file systems to at least some extent after booting.

- Collin

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

fat 16 is still hella fast. Faster than fat 32. But it is only useful for putting the OS on it nowadays. Anyways if u use 2k or above dont use fat 16, but if u use 98 or 95 fat 16 would be good to put the OS on.