Drive Partitons

[TimTims]

I have Win98Se and want to install W2K Server(I`m studying it and want to practise) as well on the same HDD but have no experience. Any help in plain english would be appreciated. Also help with backup`s and boot disks.Thanks

[Jimstep]

Welcome to SysOpt!

If you want to preserve your current operating system on the harddrive, then you will need to invest in a product like PartitionMagic. PartitionMagic will allow you to resize the partition the current operating system is running in without losing any data.

How big of a hard drive do you have?

[TimTims]

I only have 6GB HDD and 64MB RAM with a AMD-K6-2 Processor but I want to upgrade anyway as my PC is 3 years old anyway so suggest away.

[Fatal_Exception]

Start by getting the biggest hard drive your bios will support. Update the bios if that will allow you a larger hard drive. 6GB is kind of marginal if you want to do audio or video editing. but it is plenty big for experimenting with an OS. Another 64MB would be nice for your purposes.

[Jimstep]

I assume were talking about replacing the harddrive only. I'd look for an 80Gb 7200rpm drive. Partition it into 4 20Gb partitions. Install Windows98SE in one partition and Windows 2K server in the second partition. The other two partitions can be used for future growth, like if you want to install Linux and learn about that operating system.

The problem you may run into with this large of a drive is that your bios will not support it. The large capacity drives usually come with software that will overcome this limitation.

Also, since you system is 3years old, you might think about upgrading it too. We can go down that path if you want.

Cheers!

[Psycho Logical]

Before you go buying anything like software or an 80GB hard drive, why not try something like:

• How To Dual-boot Windows 9x and Windows 2000

• Ranish Partition Manager - FREE

[frank5]

Psychological, I like the dual boot article,it is short,yet it eludes to all the major pitfalls.
But the partition manager seems no better then fdisk. It doesn't enable you to resize partitions. If Tim Tims maxed out his drive with 1 solo primary partition,(for which he is running win98se), then he wouldn't be able to shrink his primary partition size to create a second partition for the next OS.
He still needs something like partition magic or system commander, wouldn't he?
If I'm wrong,and it does allow you to change partition size, please let me know since this would make it a nice little program.

Frank

[frank5]

Oh, there is a partition resizer on the same site. But it doesn't allow you to create a new partition and it doesn't allow you to change the partition that your running the program in.
Now I'm confused, please explain.

[BipolarBill]

Awww...cough for Partition Magic. You won't regret it.

[araaraara]

Yes get Partition Magic. It is an amazing program which I use all the time because I am juggling Win98/Win2000/WinXP/Mandrake Linux/Redhat Linux on my 60gig drive. If I want to add another OS or give another more space, I can do it easily without losing any data. Since version 7 is out now, you should be able to pick up version 6 for cheap, and it will still do what you want it to do.

[frank5]

Exactly, those simple dos programs are fun to experiment with on a totally clean drive or one that has data on it that you don't care about loosing. Better to familiarize yourself with partition magic which will allow a smoother install and alot more versatility,and safer at that.