windows os...which partition on a drive?

[bubba freaktree]

hi guys,

i have a 120gig western digital drive, divided into 4 30 gig partitions.

i'd like to use this drive once in a while to run windows 98se (long story!).

the drive is already "formatted" and has data on some of the partitions. i can easily move the data to any of the 4 partitions.

would it be as simple as making parition 1 "blank" and then booting up with the 98se install cd and having it write itself to the first partition?

i plan to actually open up the computer and swap my regular drive out on the primary ide channel, so it's nothing to do with master-slave or dual boot or anything.

[Sugarbaker]

Honestly, the whole situation sounds like all sorts of trouble and frustration for you. I think the simplest thing would be to get another small hard drive, 9 gig or so and use that for your win98 drive since you are going to be swapping OS drives. Just my opinion.

Stephen

[maggotcontrol]

Yep. Just move your data to the other partitions and install W98 on C:\.
If setting up a dual boot, always install Windows 98 first on the C: partition and then install 2000/XP on the other partitions. It'll automatically create a dual boot setup for you.
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[wolfpuppy]

Though it might be trouble Sugarbaker suggests, if done carefully it will work.

After your done do you always plan on swapping out hard drives to access Win98 (or changing boot drives in the BIOS)? Though I don't know your situation you might think about dual-booting, even though you said it has nothing to do with dual-booting. I would go a step further than maggotcontrol
and suggest Partition Magic. I've had too many problems with 2000/XP's native dual-boot (I'll save you the specifics unless you want them).

[~wavechop~]

partition magic makes everything so much easier...i've tried XP's native dual-boot and it does the multi-boot setup differently...it doesn't create multiple primary partitions.