C. Bailey said:
I have two hard disks, each with two partitions. My operating system
is currently on drive C:\ What I would like to do, is install another
instance of Win 2Kon Drive F:\. At my leisure, I would then start
installing all of my software (office suite, IE, OE, etc) on the F:\,
while continuing to use the operating system on the C:\. Once the
installation is complete on F:\, I would like to make F:\ my primary
boot up operating system, and eventually delete Drive C:\ once I
know everything is working properly.
Is this possible to do, and what are the key steps I would need to
take?
What you're talking about is called dualbooting, but be careful how you
install the second OS. You really want your second OS to be an
alternate C:, not F:. Does your bios allow for an option to choose
which HDD is the boot disk? If so, that would be ideal, but if not, you
will want to use a third-party boot manager to temporarily dualboot
until you eliminate the old OS. You do *not* want to use Microsoft's
dualboot method.
For background, understand that multiboot methods fall into two general
categories: the Microsoft way and everyone else's way. The two methods
use incompatible concepts and cannot simply be substituted for one
another. In a nutshell, the Microsoft way intertwines the OS's by
always booting through the same partition ("C:") and then forking to one
or another operating system on different drive letters (e.g., one W2K
will be on "C:" and the other on "F:"), while the third-party boot
managers keep OS's totally independent and truly boot separate
partitions as alternate "C:" partitions.
The MS way intertwines the OS's and uses boot.ini to define the
available OS's in the boot menu. The third-party way does not
intertwine OS's and uses a separate boot manager, not the boot.ini file.
Once you install one way, with or without intertwining, you can't easily
switch to the other. If you use the Microsoft method, you will have
OS's on C: and F: and it will be very difficult later on to eliminate
C:, as you want to do.
Third-party boot managers have the advantage that they can keep OS's
hidden from each other, so when you boot one W2K it will be designated
C: and the alternate C: partition will be hidden, and vice-versa. Since
the OS's are hidden from each other, the chance of one messing up the
other is minimized. Since the OS's are independent, it is much easier
to upgrade or eliminate either one later.
If your bios allows you to choose which HDD to boot, you can avoid using
a third-party boot manager -- just do an independent W2K install on the
second disk and use the bios to switch which OS to boot. A foolproof
way to make sure Microsoft doesn't install its own dualboot setup is to
remove the old HDD while installing the new OS on the other HDD. Once
finished, you can put the old HDD back in, though be forewarned you
might have to edit the boot.ini file on the second OS so it knows it's
drive is now in slave position instead of master.
