Dual boot with two hard drives? Also, folder cloning on two hd's?

[GremlinHater]

Alright, is it possible to do a dual boot with say, Win98SE and Win2K with each on their own harddrive?

Also, is it possible to make a folder on each harddrive and whatever you do to one it happens to the other?, this is for backup purposes as you can guess, but I only want to back up certain things.

 

[sak]

Yes its possible just have this config. but if u asking that if u take one of the harddrive out and put it in another machine to work then thats a different matter.

 

[Shmorq]

Yes, you can put Win98SE and Win2K on separate drives. If you wanna share files with both, make sure you use FAT32 when installing Win2K since Win98 cannot read an NTFS file system.

 

[GremlinHater]

Alright, how about this, if I have 2 harddrives, 98SE and 2000, and I partition it logically on 1 of the harddrives, will they both be able to see the second hard drive? Do they both still have to be FAT32? The second would be pure storage, just plain format.

Edit: What order would I install the OS's if I used two different harddrives? Same as logical? Win98SE and then Win2K?

 

[RaWrulez]

as long as you dont use NTFS... (NT File System) Win98 cannot veiw it....

just format the drive using fat32

 

[Shmorq]

I see what you're getting at now..

Your Win2K will read ALL the partition, and you Win98 will only read the FAT32 partitions.

Therefore, if you set aside 1 partition that is NTFS for Win2K, one FAT32 for Win98SE, and then on your second drive, you set it to FAT32, both will be able to access this 2nd drive.

Personally, I would got with FAT32 all around. NTFS has some more security features, but for normal use, there's really no difference at all. I believe the searches are faster for NTFS if you have indexing service enabled, but that's the only feature I use from it.

 

[GremlinHater]

Alright, thanks, one last question, the second HD is all of my old computer. I want to use my new one to back up ALL of it, I was thinking of hooking it up slave and then copying it through DOS to make sure I get all the files, questions...

Change old drive to slave and start settings in BIOS to prevent old HD overriding new?

What DOS command would I use? Say the folder I'm copying it to is "dbackup".

Second harddrive is a 10gig, the other is 60gig, so I have the room, how long will it take to transfer 7 of that 10 gig to the new one? I think it's 5400RPM and the new is 72000 RPM, does it's ATA make any real difference?

 

[Shmorq]

I would personally connect the new one as a slave to the old computer as is. Then, copy everyhing within windows to the new drive. (Make sure under 'Folder Options', you have 'show all hidden files and folders' enabled.)

If you must copy everyhing to your new drive from your new computer under DOS, I believe the copy command is:

xcopy d: c: /s /e

I'm assuming the d: drive is your old one and your new one is the c: drive. The /s copies all the directories and sub-directories and their respective files. The /e copies empty directories which /s will not.

The different speeds will make no difference. And it shouldn't take any longer than 10 minutes max. Maybe longer under DOS unless you enable smardrv which is a hard drive caching program.

 

[Shmorq]

Actually, you probably can't do this under DOS since I'm not sure if it can recognize a FAT32 partition which you must have for a 60GB hard drive.

What's so important on your old drive that you must have? If they are simply data files, install your new OS's on the new drive first, then connect the old one. Then your new OS's will be able to access the old drive and you can back everything up.

 

[GremlinHater]

Well, I was only going to copy all of it in case I forgot something, but I think I might just do that and hope I can get everything I needed backed up.