How to multi boot NT,ME, and 2000 on one drive?

[SonicFlux]

If you had to install NT4.0 Workstation, winME, and win2k on one 18gig hard drive, how would you do it?

How many primary partitions? How many logical drives in the extended partition? In what order would you install the OSes? Any third party bootmanagers...

 

[AndyHui]

You won't need a boot manager with those 3 OSes. I would recommend at least 3 partitions, one for each OS. You need to install WinME 1st, then WinNT, then Win2K.

 

[SonicFlux]

Ok, but how do I keep NT from overwiting ME? Will I need to hide the ME partition first?

Also, I've heard that it is good practice to make 15meg or so first primary partition for the boot.ini files and such... is this true?

 

[IamDavid]

"Also, I've heard that it is good practice to make 15meg or so first primary partition for the boot.ini files and such... is this true? "


I have a 400MB partition for my boot.ini and I also put my swap files on it because it is in the front of the drive therefore the fastest..

 

[SUOrangeman]

In my dissertation (see link below), I used a 510MB partition for C:, just for temp/swap space. I will be revising that with my next system, upping C: to 1GB or so, still using it as swap/temp space. Granted, I intend to have 60 to 90GB anyway, so I won't have a problem donating 1GB to swap.

-SUO

 

[SonicFlux]

I will soon be running a cheetah X15 (15,000 rpm) and a cheetah 18XL (10,000 rpm). I plan on putting all OSes on the X15 and making a 1gig C: partition on the 18XL for swap files. But in this case, would the benefits of a faster drive outway the benefits of placing swap files on a seperate disk? In other words, should I put the swap files on the X15 (with the OSes) or on the 18XL?

 

[rlism]

How much RAM do you have? I have a similar HD setup with an Atlas 10k, an Atlas 10k2, and 512MB RAM. I use my 10k2 for the OS's and I use the 10k for the swap. The 10k is so loud I can hear reads/writes. Anyway, I haven't noticed a difference because the swap file is rarely accessed. I'm probably gonna move it back over to the 10k2 so I can use the 10k for data storage or for another machine.

As for an ME/NT/2K installation, install in that order. With NT/ME in the mix though, the boot partition has to be FAT. ME can't read NTFS, NT can't read FAT32. I wouldn't install any of the OS's on a FAT partition just for capacity and performance reason. So my setup on just one 15K drive would be....

C:<1GB FAT for boot/swap
D: FAT32 WindowsME
E: NTFS or FAT32 Windows2k
F: NTFS WindowsNT (just guessing you'd use this least)

This way windows ME won't get screwy if drive letters change. You don't have to do this but it causes least complications. Ideally you would put the OS you use most in D:, E: 2nd most, F: least, but things can get screwy and it could be more difficult to install. I really recommend just losing NT so you can just do C: FAT32 WindowsME, D: FAT32 Windows2000 (or losing ME so you can do C: NTFS 2000, D: NTFS NT). Either of these two latter setups would let you experiment the 10k drive to use just for a swap file to see how performance changes. My guess is you won't see a difference.