Multiple OS on 1 Drive

[Guest]

Hello all,

I would like everyone's opinion on whether it would be okay (from a performance point of view) to have multiple OS's partitioned into their "area" on one drive and their respective data/user/programs on another drives.

Here's what I'd like to do:

1. I have 3 x 36GB Ultra160 10KRPM drives

2. I would like to install Win2K, Suse Linux, Solaris 8 and WinXP onto one of the drives and each one will be partitioned equally at approx. 9 GB each.

3. The other 2 drives will be partitioned into 2 partitions (minimum) each using their respective file system. (For example: drive 2 will have 18G for Win2K and 18G for Suse and drive 3 will have 18G for Solaris and 18G for Win XP)

Is this wise?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Christopher

 

[camieabz]

Its very possible.

You should get yourself a copy of Partition Magic. Latest Edition you can afford. This will not only make partitioning easy, but will tell you which operating systems use FAT, FAT32, NTFS etc.

3 x 36GB 160. Wow! If I could afford 3 of them, I could afford 4, and I'd have RAID 0+1 SCSI!!!!!!!!!!

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[Guest]

Guess what?

I did decide to pony up for another 36GB.

I have used Partition magic before and its a good product. But this time, I'll use the OS's partition tool to try and install them separately. Life is about trying anyway... hehehe.

In light of my new drive addition, maybe it be "better" then to now partition the drives to have the OS on the same drive since I now have 4 drives?

For example:

Drive 1: partition A (Win2K Server) @ 6 GB
rest of Win2K partitions (whatever) @ 30GB

Drive 2: partition A (SUSE Linux) @ 10 GB
rest of Linux partitions (whatever) @ 26GB

Drive 3: partition A (Solaris 8) @ 10 GB
rest of Solaris partitions (whatever) @ 26GB

Drive 4: partition A (WinXP) @ 7 GB
rest of WinXP partitions (whatever) @ 29GB


Or should I stick with my original plan?

BTW, If I want to use LILO, shouldn't I have to make sure that the first 500MB is formatted as FAT, so I could put the boot sector for the Linux, windows and Solaris images there?

Don't really need RAID, its not mission critical. It for my home server and programming platform. I could buy a RAID unit and install the module on my case if I need to I guess.

thanks again,

Christopher

 

[forgettythatty]

I know all about using partition magic to multiboot any windows. Other stuff like system commander destroyed my partitions and I lost everything. I prob could have gotten it back, but I didn't know then what I know now. I don't know jack about suse or solaris.

In any case use boot magic. always have it enabled. use the win me boot disk to enter windows setups with the partition you want to install to active. use pqboot.exe if boot magic gets kicked out of there to set the partition with boot magic installed active, to enable boot magic again and then you can use advanced partition hiding and override the default settings and stuff.