Setting Up Multiple OS's Over 4 HDDs

J

jfish

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2005
Messages
333
I currently have 2 1GB drives and 2 300GB Raptor drives. They are connected to a evga 790i motherboard and are currently in raid though I think I have to disable that for this process. I plan on unraiding them, deleting the partitions then installing XP 32 on 1 of the raptors and 1 of the 1GB ones. and vista 64 on 1gb one, and vista 32 on 300gb raptor.

right now when i try to install xp 32 on the unraided raptors i get a blue screen of death crash right after all the initial windows drivers have loaded in the xp install process. i have read online and i believe the problem lies with raid and the undeleted partitions. i might also have to unhook some of the sata cables and install 1 os at a time.

i write all this out because this will probably be an all day affair doing this and i want to make exactly sure how to do it. do i have to install the sata drives 1 at a time? why am i getting the BSOD when installing xp32 atm is it because of the raid setup? any help would be appreciated ive never run a multi os system before.

i know i have 8gb ram and xp can only utilize 4gb, but i tried removing 2 sticks and i still got bsod when installing.

thanks a bunch
 
Only one answer consisting of one word matters here:

Virtualization.

'Nuff typed.

psssttt... I think you mean 2 1TB drives... ;)
 
You are just asking for headaches but ah what the hell...

Sure its possible. RAID drivers should be required at bootup if you are using the controller still (F6 during windows installs). Disable RAID in bios and it should work normally. Each time you install an OS it will want to write its own unique snowflake of a bootloader on an MBR. So after you get it all installed, you will have to sort that mess out with a bootloader editing program, theres a bunch available.

But yeah you could keep the RAID and virtualize. Unless you want to try gaming or something on each OS, the performance hit wont be that bad. Depends why you are trying to do this I suppose.
 
well i have vista 64 on the drives right now and its been pretty unstable for a bunch of games and i did not get a computer this sick to have games crash on me. so i need to put xp 32 on something and i figured unraiding would be best? i have no idea anymore.

ill read up on virtualization and this bootloader stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top