Best way to make and manage partitions?

[pcmech007]

Hi all...I have an 8 GB hard drive that I want to chop into 2 partitions and put on Win98 and 2K Server. In the past I've used NT's setup to make partitions and I'm assuming that 2K Server has the same tool, but my priorities are to get 98 on right away and 2K sometime later.

I'm wondering if there's a good 3rd party tool that will let me make the partitions plus a boot partition, so that I'm not shooting myself in the foot for later on... I know that win9x doesn't have managing partitions at the center of its concerns...

Thanks in advance.

[Steve R Jones]

Good ol Fdisk thats on the win98 startup disk will do just fine for splitting the harddrive. If you don't do it now, you'll need partition magic to split it.

[pcmech007]

Okay, but is there a good boot master program that I can install on the boot partition? Something like os/2's boot master is what I have in mind.

Otherwise, either 98 or 2K would have to create a boot-choice option on the primary partition, and I'm not 100% they will do this for me.

[Beemer]

Install Win98 first and then Win Y2K.
After installing WinY2K, you will be offered boot options by WinY2K's boot manager. You will have 30 seconds to make your choice of which operating system you wish to boot into. WinY2K boot manager is configurable. You can set the default O/S to either Win98, (if no choices made) or WinY2K. You can further set the time limit for the selection option. You won't need a boot manager.

Cheers!

[pcmech007]

Okay, sounds like a plan.

One question though: I end up reinstalling w98 way too often (because hey, it's win98) so if I do that will it reinstall nicely into its own little partition on not mess up the boot manager?

Also, I guess I wouldn't need a separate boot partition afterall, because 2K installs the boot manager on the first partition where it finds an OS. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks Beemer

[Xaotic]

You can specify the partition and directory to install W2K on when you set it up at a later date. While you setup the partitions now, go ahead and format the second partition in Fat32, recommended for dual booting. It'll allow you access to data or downloaded files from both partitions, give you a place to store some temporary files if needed till W2K is installed, can be either installed on or reformatted into NTFS during installation or converted to NTFS at a later date.

If you format the Win98 partition, you will need to back up and restore the boot loader files from the root directory. Performing a repair installation, I'd back up as well since I've never tried it.

You can put them both into the same partition, but it can get very confusing and become difficult to trouble shoot. Applications can exhibit some bizarre behaviors even though listed in separate registries and it's too easy to forget which apps go with which OS. One final problem is that you need to pick a separate path for installing programs on 1 OS to distinguish between the both, and remember to change the default paths during the installation process consistently if you are installing an app on both OSs.