Re: Xp on 2 hard drives

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

I presume the OP wants to run either of 2 WinXP OSes, each installed
on its own HD.

He can boot a specific OS by one of two methods:
1) Reset the BIOS's HD boot order during the POST part of booting, or
2) Use a multi-boot manager to load the OS which the user speicifies.

The latter can be done with 3rd party software (e.g. xOSL, Boot Commander,
etc.) or with WinXP's own boot loader/manager, ntldr. Ntldr uses entries in
the boot.ini file to present a menu to the user, and by putting one entry in
boot.ini for each of the 2 OSes, the user can choose at boot time which OS
to load and run.

My comment about cloning is that it obviates the need to do another lengthy
installation with its need for explaining to the Microsoft rep why you're
installing your WinXP twice within 120 days. But since the cloning doesn't
automatically produce a dual-booting boot.ini file for you as two separate
installations will do, you'll have to add the 2nd entry to boot.ini yourself,
and you'll have to set the timeout value in the boot.ini file to some reasonable
non-zero number of seconds.

The problem with RAID Level 1 is that it won't create a system backup in
case of a virus of some file corruption - as soon as a virus gets going on
one HD, or as soon as a file is corrupted, the effects appear immediately
on both HDs.

"Manny Borges" asked:
Are you saying that the OP should play with their BIOS evreytime they want to switch installations? Or that cloning and creating a multiboot by restoring to a different drive is good idea? All with the motivation of trying circumvent a process that isn't going to stop you in the first place?

And is it possible you simply didn't understand the OPS question?

Is the OP looking for speed or fault tolerance?

Whichever , the answer is hardware based RAID.

RAID 0 for speed, RAID 1 for faulttolerance.

Google can yield copious amounts of information on either of these two topics.

Or is the OP wanting to run two separate installations of XP?

In that case there is copious information available, or they can just install and read the screen for all the information they need.

"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote
When each OS is run, it will call its own
partition "C:" and the other OS's partition "D:" because each thinks
that it is the OS which was installed on the "C:" partition. This will not cause any problems as long as you don't make shortcuts
which refer to files in the other OS's partition.

Actually, if each OS had shortcuts referring to files in the other
partition (which it would call the "D:" partition), they would all
work properly since the "other" OS's partition would always be
the "D:" partition - not matter which OS was running. The problems
appear when you put in another device that causes the 2nd OS's
partition to become the "E:" or some other partition. But as long
as the device configuration doesn't change, shortcuts between
partitions will work.

*TimDaniels*


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Xp on 2 hard drives
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  • Re: Xp on 2 hard drives
    ... the answer is hardware based RAID. ... Or is the OP wanting to run two separate installations of XP? ... that it is the OS which was installed on the "C:" partition. ... if each OS had shortcuts referring to files in the other ...
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