Install XP on another HD without disturbing 98?

[Warwind]

I have a three-hard-drive system with Win98 installed on Drive C, some data on Drive D, and nothing on Drive E. I was wondering if it's possible to install Windows XP Pro on my blank Drive E WITHOUT disturbing anything that's on Drive C.

When I want to use XP, I will set my machine to boot from Drive E and restart. When I want to go back to 98, I will set it to boot from Drive C and restart.

I fear the XP install will try to overwrite the boot area of Drive C, when I don't want XP to even LOOK at Drive C or do ANYTHING to it. I don't want a "dual-boot" O/S situation, I want the two to be TOTALLY separate.

Does anyone out there have experience doing what I want to do?

Thanks!

[WyllyWylly]

Unless you want to leave the cover off and switch cables, you will have to have something to control the boot sector of your computer. XP will indeed overwrite the boot sector, and then provide you with a menu to launch the OS you choose at startup. There are also third party software tools to do this for you, but they still manage the boot sector of your root drive, which is C:.

[Warwind]

Thanks for the info, Mark.

How about if I set the machine so the root drive (Drive C) is the blank hard drive. Do you know if the XP setup program will go out to other hard drives, see my Windows 98 installation, and try to do something to it? (Like upgrade it.)

I guess the other solution would be to temporarily unplug my Win98 HD and do the XP install, but that would change the drive letter of the CD-ROM drive when I plugged the hard drive back in.

Also, has anyone out there had experience with mixing NTFS hard drives with FAT32 hard drives in the same system? Can they be mixed?

Thanks!

[WyllyWylly]

Let's make sure we're talking about what's relevant and what isn't, one step at a time.

<hr>Do you know if the XP setup program will go out to other hard drives, see my Windows 98 installation, and try to do something to it?<hr>

XP setup will examine ALL hard drives connected to the system. If you opt for a "new install," it will not modify 98 in any way. This is true even if 98 is on the C: drive. What XP (as with all NT based OSs) will do is to modify the boot sector, and copy the existing one to BOOTSECT.DOS. When you start the system, and you see the boot menu, selecting XP will allow the XP boot sector to run to completion. If you select Win98, it will pass control to BOOTSECT.DOS, and Windows 98 will boot as if it were the only OS on the drive. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you allow the dual-boot to happen, unless you have a specific reason, such as testing 98's boot sector and you want a controlled environment, for not doing so.

With any multi-OS configuration, make sure that you install each OS into a separate partition or drive, or you will be asking for trouble.

<hr>mixing NTFS hard drives with FAT32 hard drives in the same system? Can they be mixed?<hr>

Yes, they can. 98 cannot see NTFS volumes natively, but you can download an NTFS file system driver for Windows 98 from http://www.sysinternals.com. The free version is a read-only driver, for read/write access you'll need to crack open your piggy bank.

My experience with NTFS in a home situation is that it's not necessary. There are a lot of good things about it, but recovering from an NTFS disaster is painful at best. Unless you need something that NTFS provides (quota management, security, ownership, last-accessed attributes) then it's just adding overhead. Performance-wise, I think most people would be hard pressed to notice a difference between NTFS and FAT32 if they didn't know what file system was in use.

[Warwind]

Thanks again, Mark. What you say makes sense to me. I'll have to think about it some more, make sure I back up everything on my Drive C, and just give it a whirl and see what happens!

I appreciate all the information!

[cmpbllrck]

I realize this is an old post but why not since you have more then one hard drive and 98 is no longer supported, install xp on drive c and for the last and best updates on 98SE try the " 98SE Unofficial Service Pack "

[DocWatson]

As long as we're digging up old threads, we might as well have a link to the suggestion included.

Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack.