Dual boot using two hard disks?

[irkregent]

I'm looking at installing Windows 2000 Pro on my Windows 98SE machine. I'd like to start with a dual boot, with the idea I will eventually eliminate the 98 OS when I've got everything working to my satisfaction on 2000. With that in mind, I thought that it would be best to add a second hard disk and install 2000 on it, then just remove (or reformat) the current hard disk when I'm done with 98.But, I'm not sure the steps involved in doing so. Do I just add the second disk, and then jump right into the 2000 setup? Or must I prep/swap/disable/etc. before starting the 2000 setup?

[zlim]

I can't help with two harddrives but if you dual boot 98 and 2K on one hard drive and decide to remove 98, here are directions.http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/dual/rem...vedualboot.htmlclick on kill 9x in the left column and you'll get step by step instructions for removing 9x and keeping the 2K install.

[Prelude76]

step1: if you have win98 on drive 1, and choose to install win2000 on drive 2, win2000 copies the NT boot loader to drive 1 and will automatically give you option on boot up to choose windows 2000 or win98. step2: when it comes time to ditch win98 and use win2000, i'd recommend in your case swapping drive 1 and drive 2 master/slave status, so your drive 2 becomes drive 1. but the trouble is NT's boot loader will be on the win98 drive, so it either has to be copied to win2000 drive and edit the boot.ini file to suit, or i believe if you put in win2000 setup disk and go to repair the installation, it should update your nt boot loader to point to your correct win2000 location.so go ahead and set up win2000 on drive 2 for dual-booting, and in the meantime, i'll look into the steps you'd need to ditch win98 and keep win2000, coz i'm giving you just a vague idea whats involved in step 2. or in the meantime, someone more knowledgeable with multi-booting systems like Peachy can recall the exact procedure for step2. not saying i dont know how, i just dont remember the exact steps since currently i use a special linux boot loader to override win98 and win2000 booters.

[-ct-]

step1: if you have win98 on drive 1, and choose to install win2000 on drive 2, win2000 copies the NT boot loader to drive 1 and will automatically give you option on boot up to choose windows 2000 or win98. 

exactly right

step2: when it comes time to ditch win98 and use win2000, i'd recommend in your case swapping drive 1 and drive 2 master/slave status, so your drive 2 becomes drive 1.  but the trouble is NT's boot loader will be on the win98 drive, so it either has to be copied to win2000 drive and edit the boot.ini file to suit, or i believe if you put in win2000 setup disk and go to repair the installation, it should update your nt boot loader to point to your correct win2000 location.so go ahead and set up win2000 on drive 2 for dual-booting, and in the meantime, i'll look into the steps you'd need to ditch win98 and keep win2000, coz i'm giving you just a vague idea whats involved in step 2.  or in the meantime, someone more knowledgeable with multi-booting systems like Peachy can recall the exact procedure for step2.  not saying i dont know how, i just dont remember the exact steps since currently i use a special linux boot loader to override win98 and win2000 booters.

again, just rightwhen removing 98 from the system, set the 2k drive to master, boot to 2k cd and tell the installer to repair boot fileswhen done, edit the boot.ini file to remove reference to win98 (if not already done automatically) and yer all set

[b2cm]

Don't ditch your Win98 partition even if you won't use it. You might need it later for some apps that won't run on NT/2000/XP.