Will someone please help me figure this Multi Boot out, no idea where to start????

[thatsright]

Hi Guys. Here is a very interesting Multi-Boot Scenario. I am studding to obtain my Windows 2000 MCSE, and because of this I am going to install 5 different O/S on my PC for practicing. I just bought a new Maxtor 60Gig 7200RPM HD that adds to my 4 year old 6.4Gig HD. This is what I?d like to put on:

Drive C: 500 MB-MS-DOS 6.22 FAT
Drive D: Windows 2000 Advanced Server NTFS 5
Drive E: Windows 2000 Professional NTFS 5
Drive F: Windows 2000 Professional FAT32
Drive G: Windows 98 FAT32
Drive H: Windows NT Server 4.0 NTFS 4
Drive I: Just Data Storage in FAT 16 (for FAT 32 if its compatible with NTFS 5??)

All of this added up = 60gig of HD space for the Maxtor Drive
Plus the separate other physical Seagate HD of 6.4 Gig

Now the reason I?m writing all of this is to ask for some advice on how you folks would divvy up the Logical HD space for each O/S on the Maxtor Drive. Please let me know how much space I should allocate to each drive. For W2K AS, MS-DOS, and NT Server 4.0 I want to keep things to a healthy minimum in terms of HD space allocation as for these 3 O/S?s are just to be used for practice and not really any major apps or data storage. But for W2K Pro in FAT 32 & NTFS and Win 98 will be used at home when I?m not practicing.

Finally, in what order would you install the above O/S?s. I just put them in the order above that seems right to me, but I?m not an expert if it will be fine this way as listed above.

Please help me out with your comments and/or tips.

 

[igiveup]

Just a couple of notes for you...

1) Windows 2000 will convert any NTFS 4 partition to NTFS 5 when it installs. NT 4.0 with SP4 was supposed to add a patch that would allow NT 4.0 to read NTFS 5 partitions but I have heard that it didn't work for a teacher of mine. For this reason you might want to leave the NT 4.0 partition unformatted when you install Windows 2000 Adv. Server and then Windows 2000 Pro. I would then install NT 4.0 after these two.

2) Windows 2000 can recognize NTFS, FAT 32, and FAT 16 formatted partitions. Windows 98 cannot read NTFS 4 or 5. Windows NT 4.0 cannot read FAT 32, but can read FAT 16.

Order I would install these:

1) DOS 6.22
2) Windows 98
3) Windows 2000 Adv. Server
4) Windows 2000 Pro (both file formats)
5) Windows NT 4.0


I would keep your I: drive as FAT 16 because its the one format that everything should be able to access.

As far as partition sizes would go I would give Win 2k adv server at least 1.5 GB of space (install should run around 685 MB plus swap file would put you at about a gig. Another 500 MB to be safe). I would do the same for NT 4.0. DOS about 500 MB to a gig. Don't need much space for it.

60 GB really is a ton of space. Don't go too small on your partitions cause its better to have space you aren't using than to not have enough.

 

[TonyRic]

My .02 is this:

I agree with all that igiveup said except this:

Create all OS's with a 2GB Partition, except DOS which will be 500MB. Then create 3 2GB FAT16 Partitions (1 for data storage, 1 for data transport and 1 for application installations) as this will give you lots of space to transport data between Winnt, DOS and the other OS's and app installations that are common between winnt and the others.

Then the rest as Fat32 which 98 and 2k will see just fine.

You must remember that you are limited to 26 drive letters including 2 for floppy drives and whatever number of CDROM/Zip/Jaz/etc. drives you have so you do not want all of it to be fat16 because you are limited to 2GB for that. But you also do not want to allocate more than 2GB for each OS as you will only be wasting the space as you will want to install common apps to the same partitions to minimize disk use and maximize disk efficiency.

This is my opinion and advice, just remember that advice is worth what you pay for it... 😀