Author Topic: 3 Computers in 1 ( 3 different OS's to boot up to on selection) (Read 859 times)

TequilaChaser · « **on:** February 10, 2008, 06:57:56 PM »

ok guru's, I am wanting to take 3 SATA hard drives and load them up with 3 seperate OS's ( operating systems ), I want to do this so I have the following:

1 hard drive - WD 150gig Raptor 10,000rpm SATA-I: Windows XP Pro ( for Gaming and Aces High forum access only )

1 hard drive - Hitachi 250 gig 7,200rpm SATA-II: Windows XP Pro ( Strictly for my work when at home, need to use MS activesync, so I can keep my Dell laptop synced between my homeoffice PC & my work Office PC...etc...etc...)

1 hard drive - Hitachi 250 gig 7,200rpm SATA-II: Windows Vista ( also would like to know which is the best of the Vista family? 32 bit? 64 bit? ultimate? ) want to go ahead and start getting used to this, yet keep it seperate from my other stuff....

all of these 3 hard drives will be able to be backed up to a WD My Book 750GB 7200 RPM External Hard Drive (3 individual partitions with a 4th for extra storage), so I do not lose anything on any of the 3 internal hard drives.....

now.....which do I load first, and in what order do I do it? so it all works and there are no conflicts when the computer turns on. I am guessing it will bring up a screen for boot options/ boot drive selection.......

any and all help will be appreciated.if you need more specifics regarding the PC Build just let me know or ask.......

humble · « **Reply #1 on:** February 10, 2008, 08:07:21 PM »

Load your 2 xp systems 1st then Vista. The vista install will locate both XP installs and give you a multiboot option. You can use easy BCD 1.7 or similiar 3rd party boot manager if you want to....

I've got both Vista Business and Home premium, both are very similiar and "OK". Biggest issues for me are the "virtual folders" and odd sharing that can complicate stuff. I rolled my business laptop back to XP only. My desktop has an XP work, XP stripped for AH, Vista and Ubuntu...

TequilaChaser · « **Reply #2 on:** February 10, 2008, 08:26:21 PM »

on your Vista OS's, humble. are they both 32bit or 64 bit?

I am wanting to go with 64bit Vista Ultimate, seeing how none of the 3 hard drives will be interacting with each other ( shouldn't be anyways ) will this cause any problems?

also, what is anyones thoughts on using Windows 64bit XP Pro? or should I stick with the 32 bit version?

I am wanting to get full use of my Athlon 6400 X2 and 4 Gig's of 1066 RAM

sure hope to have this thing all together by end of the week.......

Jag34 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 11, 2008, 12:58:28 AM »

I am doing the same with my system. I have
1 hard drive with WinXP Pro for everyday surfing, photo's and emails.
2nd hd with WinXP Home, for gaming only. I have the bare bones XP home installed and about 8 games on this hd. I don't use this hd for nothing else but games.
3rd hd with Linux for testing out different Linux distro's

I use a hard drive switch by : http://www.industechnologies.com/products_list.asp?CatID=168&SubCatID=0&SubSubCatID=0

You can have up to 4 hd's in one system and choose which system to boot up with before you start your system. I've used the IDE one for 4 years and went with the SATA one last year. I love this little thing.

Hope this helps

Jag34

Spatula · « **Reply #4 on:** February 11, 2008, 01:16:17 AM »

Or you could just have one OS - and install VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC and run the other two as 'virtual' PCs. Thats what i do.
You can have as many virtual PCs as you want. You can copy them and clone them and back them up as much as you want - the virtual 'harddrive' is just a file on your host computer.
And the coolest thing is you can switch between them all without rebooting

you can put them to sleep for months and wake em up without having to ever reboot.
Best of all Virtual PC is fast, robust, and totally free! If you have a dual-core PC and a healthy amount of RAM, the virtual PCs run very well indeed.

Only drawback is you cant really game on the virtual PCs

Vulcan · « **Reply #5 on:** February 11, 2008, 03:27:40 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Spatula
Only drawback is you cant really game on the virtual PCs

Noob.

Tried Xen Express yet?

Skuzzy · « **Reply #6 on:** February 11, 2008, 08:02:41 AM »

I would avoid the 64 bit version of Vista. All the drivers had to be re-written for Vista, so there are even less drivers available for the 64 bit version of Vista than for XP and they have more problems.

Put that on top of the problems in Vista itself and you have the makings for a pretty messy system.

Spatula · « **Reply #7 on:** February 11, 2008, 01:54:57 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Vulcan
Noob.

Tried Xen Express yet?

That's more enterprise level virtual server kinda stuff tho isnt it??

llama · « **Reply #8 on:** February 11, 2008, 11:34:09 PM »

You know, you could just *PARTITION* one large hard drive and install all your OSes that way. Your computer will generate a lot less noise and heat, and use less electricity too.

And I suspect getting one 750 GB hard drive would cost less than buying three smaller drives.

My current notebook has 4 (count 'em, four) OSes installed onto one 250GB hard drive. Here's the order I used to install everything.

1. Install DOS. In my case, I use the DOS that came with Win98. Use a boot floppy or a bootable thumbdrive with FDISK, Format, Label, Sys, and so on. I made one partition with 250 MB of space. That's plenty for Norton Ghost 2003 and the few DOS things I still have to/like to do.

2. Install WinXP. Tell the installer to make a second partition and install to it. XP will install a boot menu that lets you go to DOS. 30 GB.

3 Install Vista. Tell the installer to make a third partition and install to it. Vista will install a new Boot Menu that has an option for an older version of Windows. Choosing it displays the boot menu that XP put on. 40GB.

4. Install Linux. I used ubuntu, which creates two partitions (EXT3 and a SWAP partition). It puts on another boot menu called grub. Choosing Windows from it launches Vista's boot menu. 10 and 1 GB total.

5. Format the rest of the empty space as NTFS. Store all your data there, including your My Documents folder, your mail store, your photos, your music, and VMWare images, and your Ghost images. All the OSes (except for DOS) can read and write to the data partition, allowing full access to your stuff no matter what OS you're booting into. About 160GB, give or take.

6. If cascading boot menus bother you, install another boot manager to rule them all. I used to use Boot Magic, but I don't know what I'd recommend now. Otherwise, set the default OSes and timer times so that your favorite OS boots automatically by going through all the menus.

7. Optional. Use software that exists across all platforms. I use Firefox and Opera for email, and there are Linux and Windows versions. Tell each to use the same folders on the Data drive for storing bookmarks, email stores, and so on.

Works every time...

-Llama

Vulcan · « **Reply #9 on:** February 11, 2008, 11:56:53 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Spatula
That's more enterprise level virtual server kinda stuff tho isnt it??

It's kinda like a baby VM ESX., cept the requirements aren't so high. Just needs a 64bit CPU, and 1Gb and up of RAM.