Need Multiple Boot Partition Info_w/Windows+RAID

[Gregg OBanion]

My machine is a Hewlett Packard NetServer LH 3 using Windows 2000 Advanced Server. It has a Pentium II 400MHz MMX 512 MB RAM. an onboard i960 Intel chip, NetRaid Controller and Three 9.1 Gig SCSI Ultra 2 Hard Drives using RAID 0.

My question is concerning the installation of W2k Server and WinXP with RAID 0. I???m a little confused so please bare with me. I want 2 copies of W2k Server (for testing purposes) and 2 copies of WinXP. First off, is this possible or feasible? What are the pros and cons? Should these copies be on their own physical drive or can I use RAID 0 with the multiple drives I have. The problem I have with the dual boot I just installed is this???(W2k Server and WinXP). After first installing W2k to a primary partition that the clean install created, I could not install WinXp to a primary partition. When I created the partition for WinXP, upon installation it would only let me install to a logical drive partition. The dual boot worked perfectly but I???m concerned. Doesn???t an OS have to be installed on a Primary Partition? I don???t know much about a Boot Manager but will this be affected. What does setting a partition to Active have to do with this if anything? Where do I find a boot manager and what is it? What is the Master Boot Record? How do I choose and set the Default OS for startup? I remember that with WinNT 4 I was able to create more than one primary partition and I think I created them from within Disk Manager. W2k will not allow this. Another funny thing happened. When I deleted the WinXP partition from the new dual boot installation, and restarted, The boot process still let me select between W2k and WinXP even though I deleted WinXP???s install partition. Why are there remnants of XP? Sorry for being such a rookie. Can you help me shed some light on this subject? I want to get the installation right. Should I disable RAID or does it have performance advantages? Thanks Gregg gobanion@netscape.net

[Gene Dinkey]

Of course booting multiple OS's on a Netserver is not supported but you shouldn't have any problems with what your doing.

An OS does not need to be installed to a primary partition. Since you are installing different versions of Windows the Windows boot manager shouldn't have any problems picking up the other installs and booting them.

[Chris Blumenshine · Accepted solution]

The BOOT.INI file on the active partion is what defines where the OS is loaded from. If you open up your BOOT.INI file on the root dir with your notepad, you will see the list that gives you the option to boot from Win2k or WinXP or Netware or DOS or whatever operating system you installed. You'll also see the path that tells the system where to boot from, i.e. which adapter, which disk, which partion. Just because you delete the partion that one of your operating systems was located, does not mean the BOOT.INI is going to be automaticly modified. If your confident of what your doing, you can modify the file yourself, but I'd recommend that you just deal with the extra option if your not sure. Reason is, if you have NTFS on your active partion, and you screw up your BOOT.INI to the point where you can't load an OS anymore, then it is difficult to get into it to repair.

If you want to install XP to a primary partion, try making a primary partion from the Win2k disk manager before booting to the XP cd. Although I'm not completely familiar with XP, I would expect it to see the partion you just created and allow you to install to it.

[Gregg OBanion]

Thanks Gene and Chris. I'm beginning to understand. Another question. Is the boot.ini file the same as the Boot Manager? W2k Server's Disk Manager doesn't allow me to create another Primary Partition. (Remember I'm running RAID O which looks at the three disks like it's one physical drive)I think NT 4 allowed me to create mutiple Primary Partitions in Disk Manager. Do I need to disable RAID and use my 3 disk drives as seperate phisical drives to achive this? Will I sacrifice performance from the loss of RAID? Without an OS installed on a Primary Partition, is it true that I can't select it as Active from Disk Manager. I'm thinking I may want to delete an OS installation in the future by just deleting it's partition after first setting a different partition as active. Is that alright to do?
Thanks Gregg

[Gene Dinkey]

Is the boot.ini file the same as the Boot Manager?


The boot.ini file is what the boot manager uses to determine what menu selections to display and what drive/partition that selection is associated to.

----

W2k Server's Disk Manager doesn't allow me to create another Primary Partition. (Remember I'm running RAID O which looks at the three disks like it's one physical drive)I think NT 4 allowed me to create mutiple Primary Partitions in Disk Manager. Do I need to disable RAID and use my 3 disk drives as seperate phisical drives to achive this?


I still don't understand why you require multiple primary partitions, it is not required for booting multiple OS's. You only need one primary partition which is set active, the boot manager will handle booting multiple OS's after that.

----

Will I sacrifice performance from the loss of RAID?


Probably.

----

Without an OS installed on a Primary Partition, is it true that I can't select it as Active from Disk Manager.


You only want to have one active/bootable partition on the system. The boot manager on that partition can be configured to boot the other OS's on the system. The secondary OS's do not need to be installed to primary partitions.

----


Hope this helps...

Gene

[Gregg OBanion]

Thanks again Gene. I'm not sure that I require more than one Primary Partition. Thats what I'm trying to establish.
Are there advantages to installing each OS to it's own Primary Partition or is that the wrong way to go about the setup. I thought that if one of the OS's failed I could just delete its partition and start over without affecting the other OS installations. Is this possible or will each OS install affect the boot.ini. It looks like theres only one boot.ini file when the Multiple OS install uses just one Primary Partition. The reason I want to do all this is purely for experimental reasons. This is not a mission critical machine. Sorry if I sound stupid. Am I making any sense? Thanks Gregg

[Mikael Rundqvist]

Hi,
another aspect is if yoe have applications installed in one OS. Remember that even if you have the file structure of the installed programs intact and you boot the remaining OS it will not have the register settings for the application. Since I read that you had three HD I suspect you might have thougth about making one drive a program drive.
/best regards Mikael Rundqvist