Possible to put multiple operating systems on a bootable external drive

[holden j caufield]

This isn't my thing now but the IT Admin left at my dad's company recently and I'm stuck doing this until they hire someone. Regardless it needs to get started. I don't mind the challenge as this was my field a few years back, but I haven't done anything of this scale and have been out of the loop for a bit. Something that would make my life easier is putting multiple operating systems on my external 2.5" drive so I can select what to install.

Back when I setup some of the servers they were all Server 2k3 variants, R2, Std., Ent. etc. I put them all on a 1 DVD with a selectable option.


Now the servers are at a remote location, all with different specs, raid controllers, etc. Some need 2k8 x64 others x86, Exchange with be a 2k3 x86 Ent, some citrix servers on 2k3 Std. R2. I do have all the disks, but bringing an external dvd drive, power adapter, external floppy drive wtih 3.5 disks, bunch of DVDs and CDs are a pain.

Has someone come up with a way to load all variants of 2k8/2k3 on my 2.5" external and install straight from there?

 

[Dahak]

I have put vista / server 2k8 on an external hard drive. i just copied over the files from the dvd and it boots right up. I dont think its possible to do it with server 2003, or at least may not be work the time to do it... i could be wrong on the 2003

to add both the x86 and x64 versions of server 2008 you can follow This which shows how to do it for vista but should work for sever 2008 and then copy the files from the resulting iso to the external hard drive