how do I boot from 2 hard drives?

[daremi]

Suppose I have two seperate hard drives, one with Windows 98 Op Sy and the other WinXP, and I connect them both to the IDE cable from which op system will it boot? I had win 98 and now I bought another HD and installed XP but I want to use both seperately as I dont want to format the windows 98 HD? How can I choose to boot from either from the win98 drive or the win XP drive?

 

[IconK7]

Did you install WinXP last? If you installed Win98 first, then it wrote the Master Boot Record with only its own boot instructions, excluding all other operating systems. If you installed WinXP second, it should have over-written the MBR with instructions to boot your choice of available Windows operating systems. When you start your machine, the WinXP boot instructions should come up offering you a choice between 98 and XP, with XP as the default first boot option.

Note: If you install Win98 last, it will over-write the WinXP boot instructions and reserve it all for itself. WinXP will be excluded.

Win98 refuses to acknowledge the existence of any other operating system.

WinXP will find & include all other Windows operating systems, but will refuse to acknowledge the existence of any non-Windows operating system. It will include Win98, but exclude Linux, Unix, MacOS, Free BSD, etc.

If you plan to install a Linux OS too, do it last. Linux OS's (& most all other non-Windoes OS's) install with bootloaders (such as LILO or Grub) that will recognize & include Windows in the boot process.

You could also obtain one of a multitude of available bootloader programs to organize the multiple boot process. Partition Magic has one, Norton has one, there are many.

 

[corkyg]

Double posting the same thread in two forums is not cool.

Anyway - boot with one or the other by means of a drive selector switch or a mobile rack. Keep them separate and make no software changes. Someday when you tire of 98, you can reformat the drive and use it as a data drive slave.

 

[Navid]

If each drive has its own master boot record, which is possible if you installed each when the other drive was not connected, you can use the Bios to select which drive to boot by placing it first in the boot priority list.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Navid
If each drive has its own master boot record, which is possible if you installed each when the other drive was not connected, you can use the Bios to select which drive to boot by placing it first in the boot priority list.

That is correct! But going into BIOS is clumsy compared to turning a key switch.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: corkyg

Originally posted by: Navid
If each drive has its own master boot record, which is possible if you installed each when the other drive was not connected, you can use the Bios to select which drive to boot by placing it first in the boot priority list.

That is correct! But going into BIOS is clumsy compared to turning a key switch.

That is correct! But, a switch is not free.