Another drive, what can I do with as far as OS

[skywalker]

I have another drive I could put in my computer. It's a FAT32 as opposed to my C: drive with XP on it.

I am assuming XP can read and store files there too.

Could I put another OS on that drive ?

Just wanted to know what my options are.

Thanks.

[zcoder]

well its kinda to late, but you could have put win98
on the other then xp on the other, but without
speacial programs it is harder to set it up after you
have installed XP.

At least this is what I have found out by doing it.
I found if I put win98 on first, then install Xp on
the other when it boots, Xp has a screen where you can
pick which one to boot into, if you don't choose one
Xp will be booted after about 25 seconds.

Zcoder....

[skywalker]

well its kinda to late, but you could have put win98
on the other then xp on the other, but without
speacial programs it is harder to set it up after you
have installed XP.

At least this is what I have found out by doing it.
I found if I put win98 on first, then install Xp on
the other when it boots, Xp has a screen where you can
pick which one to boot into, if you don't choose one
Xp will be booted after about 25 seconds.

Zcoder....

So I can't tell my BIOS to boot from my other CD ?
It's already has an OS on it.

Guess the BIOS can't be set to ignore C: and use D:
It sounds good.

:-)

[zcoder]

you can do it that way but that is kinda
annoying to have to do don't you think?


Zcoder....

[Tedd]

It's entirely fine and possible.
You'll make life much easier for yourself if you install a boot manager (Grub, Lilo, ...) It should still squeeze onto C: (in the MBR) This will allow you to boot from whichever drive you choose (once set up correctly.)
Do you have any OS in mind?

XP will be able to read/write files on the new drive, as long as it stays FAT32 (or becomes NTFS.) But if you put another OS on it, then it may want to reformat it to another filesystem, and so XP may choose to ignore it.
If you just need the extra space, then simply connecting up the drive will be fine.

And don't forget to select the jumper (the plastic doodah over the pins on the back of the drive) to be 'slave' :wink

[skywalker]

It's entirely fine and possible.
You'll make life much easier for yourself if you install a boot manager (Grub, Lilo, ...) It should still squeeze onto C: (in the MBR) This will allow you to boot from whichever drive you choose (once set up correctly.)
Do you have any OS in mind?

XP will be able to read/write files on the new drive, as long as it stays FAT32 (or becomes NTFS.) But if you put another OS on it, then it may want to reformat it to another filesystem, and so XP may choose to ignore it.
If you just need the extra space, then simply connecting up the drive will be fine.

And don't forget to select the jumper (the plastic doodah over the pins on the back of the drive) to be 'slave' :wink

Any of those boot managers freeware ?

I already have the jumpers configured correctly on the extra drive.

When I bought this computer, I put in the other drive to make it quick transferring over all of my old files.

[Tedd]

Of course they're freeware :lol
Though they're quite linux oriented - so I'm not sure what difficulties you might have trying to set up without some kind of linux system.

www.gnu.org/software/grub
freshmeat.net/projects/lilo