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Dual Boot/Dual Disk Win2000

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by jeffedit

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I have a Zpro with 2 disks. I have managed to setup win2k to dual boot from 2 separate hard drives. Question is, why does the original disk (with the dual boot.ini on it) stay as the c: drive? I cloned the original disk to the other drive so thatI wouldn't have to reload all the drivers and such, but but when I boot into the second drive, the shortcuts point to the apps. on the c: drive...the first boot drive. I want them TOTALLY isolated. Basically I want the c: drive to become the d: drive and vice versa. If I install win2k on another partition on the c: drive, will the win2k I'm not booting into be hidden on the non-active partition like in win98?
If I have to do that, can I clone the first partition to the second partition so Idon't have to start from scratch and install everything again on the new install? Please somebody explain it to me. I prefer the 2 disk scenenario.
Thanks-

7 replies

by Member 20431980

WIN2K is all seeing and all knowing. Once you boot from the original drive that drive will always be C: to the OS if its physically in the computer.

Sounds to me like you want two (at least) totally isolatable OS installations. To accomplish that I would recommend two utilities: Partition Magic and System Commander. These will permit you to create separate, bootable, primary partitions with unique OS configurations that are unaware of the other OSs you may have installed on the machine.Good Luck.

by gcordero42

if you want a separate boot drive don't clone it just boot from 1 as master 2 as slave (on hardware)and necessary to install software all over 2 again, make that partiotion you want to see on win2k as fat16 ex. w98 and start from low to high ex. dos,w311,w95,w98,WNtWs,WinMe....,W2k,WXP or you may see both as one entire hard disk with N partitions remembering start L>H and format fat16 to see all from any os you may select.

by jtucker9

First of all you need to install windows 98 on the c:/dirve and format it as fat 32, the second hard drive will be the slave and formatted as NTFS with Windows 2000 that way Windows 98 will not see the d:/drive and D will be secure when you install your software on the 2000 side you may have to install it to the d:/drive since NTFS(D) will read the c:/ partition as it should do and when you install software on the c:/drive it will be there on c:/ and the drives will be seperate. One thing you will be able to do is read only the things on c:/ when in windows 98 and read c:/ and D:/ drives when in windows 2000. I have done many of these setups for myself and Clients and it works fine.

by jeffedit

I'm working with win2K only. I ended up with a program called BootIt. Works great. Thanks for the answer.

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