Dual Booting

Hinrichisgod · 07-10-2004, 06:48 PM

How would I go about making my pc dual boot? Would I just use one of my HDD's for XP and the other for Linux or whatever else?

Jonesie · 07-10-2004, 08:30 PM

I have a triple boot of Windows 98, 2000, and XP. What you are going to want to do is to install which ever OS that you want, but be sure to leave a certain amount of partition for the other install. Use your own discernment to how much that you want each load to have on the harddrive. Good luck!

Hinrichisgod · 07-10-2004, 09:09 PM

what do you mean by partition...lol I don't know what that is...

Jonesie · 07-10-2004, 09:17 PM

Partitioning is basically setting up and reserving space on the harddrive. Whenever you load an operating system sometime very early in the loading process it will ask you to allocate how large the partition should be. Be default the partition is set to take up the entire harddrive. In your case you are going to want to make sure that you either split it evenly or adjust it for which OS that you want to have more available space to save.

Hinrichisgod · 07-10-2004, 10:33 PM

So how do I go about partitioning my HDD? Could I just use my 120GB hdd for one OS (which has XP on it now) and then my 80GB hdd for another OS?

Jonesie · 07-10-2004, 10:45 PM

You can do that, but you cannot have both connected at the same time. You would have to either go into the BIOS and decide which one that you want active or manually plug and unplug the drives from the back. I suggest that you partition them 40 (Linux) and 80 (XP). I suggest that you load XP first. Partitioning it differently is easier. Make sure that the 120GB is completly clear of any data and other OS's. Then load XP. It will come to a screen asking about wether the current partition space is ok. There will be instructions on the screen that will guide you to what you need to do. Set it for your appropriate space and then continue with the installation as normal. When you run Linux, it should sense that you have an existing partition and partition the rest of the space available. Does that help?

Hinrichisgod · 07-10-2004, 11:49 PM

so I reformat both drives and then use my xp disk to load xp on my 120 and then partition it to were I put both XP and Linux on the SAME hard drive?

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