Hi all,
Here's what I have:
2 x 160 Gig SATA II drives Raid 0 split into 4 primary partitions of equal size
4 x 500 Gig SATA II drives Raid 0 + 1
Here's what I want to be able to do:
I want to install 2 copies xp (one work, one game) and 2 copies Vista (one work, one game) on the above partitions - in case anyone's wondering these are legal, full retail copies.
at boot, i want to be able to select from 1 of the 4 os installations (currently planning on using Vista Boot Pro 3.3)
In each OS i *do not* want to see the other 3 os partitions.
i started with a virgin raid. used the XP setup to create a new partition and installed the 1st copy of xp.
then i repeated the process for the 2nd copy of xp, then with vista for the 3rd and again with vista for the 4th.
ending up with 4 partitions, 2 for xp and 2 for vista.
to get things to boot properly, i had to edit the boot.ini on drive C (1st xp install) and remove the reference to the 2nd xp install).
then copy ntldr and all the other files in c:\ to d:\, and modify the boot.ini on d:\ to refer to the 2nd partition.
then using VistaBoot Pro 3.3 i added a new os (for the 2nd xp install - as Vista groups the 2 previous XP installs together on a 'sub-menu' at boot), pointed it at the correct drive, re-named the installs to the appropriate names and saved changes.
this seemed to work, for 90% of what i wanted to do. i cannot seem to 'hide' the partitions in such a way that any OS will not see the other three partitions.
so far i've tried hiding the other partitions with Partition Magic - this method allows me to only boot into the first copy of XP, regardless of what os i choose.
i unhid the other partitions with Partition Magic and tried removing the drive letters via the Disk Management console, and this results in the same effect.
any suggestions? Should I try a different boot manager?
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