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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Bios multibooting w. multi hard drives

alfredb - Feb 21, 2008 - 5:38 pm

Some people use Chain 0 (not sure of the spelling), Boot Magic and other apps to boot into different operating systems. But if I use a different hard drive for each operating system (1 is IDE, the others are Sata) can you see any problem in multi booting that way, except that it takes a little longer?

Before any OS starts I press DEL and go into the Bios, change the boot priority and it seems to work. Just takes a few seconds longer I guess.

I'm experimenting with different Operating Systems and it seems to be a lot simpler to have each on its own hard drive rather than on multiple partitions. At least you can keep things a little more isolated as there still seems to be things you can do to a hard drive that you can't do to a partition. And apparently its faster moving data from hard drive to hard drive than from partition to partition on the same hard drive.

DeltaMac - Feb 21, 2008 - 7:40 pm

No, no problems, as long as you know how to choose between the drives. I have little knowledge about how the BIOS is used to provide booting for various drives. It's much simpler on a Mac, you know, the Mac doesn't use any BIOS. Just hold the Alt key down during boot, and Apple's boot selection screen comes up, choose the drive that you want to use, and boot to that drive. I have two drives that I use, with 5 different OS versions. I guess you have to go into BIOS each time you boot? Also on the Mac, you can just use the Startup Disk preference pane (similar to Control Panel), and select another boot disk, then restart, and it boots right to that drive, without needing to go through BIOS.

Good luck!
- Dale

alfredb - Feb 26, 2008 - 4:17 pm

On the OS X hard drive, I can bring up System Preferences/Startup Disk, but the Windows hard drive isn't there. I've tried it with 2 different OS X installs. Does that seem right? I always thought OS X can read NTFS drives. I'd forgotten about that neat feature of OS X. Sure makes rebooting awfully easy.

Now I wonder if any of your 5 partitions has a Windows install on it? And if so, is it NTFS? And does Boot Camp use NTFS?

DeltaMac - Feb 26, 2008 - 4:54 pm

Boot Camp doesn't 'use' anything. It's main purpose is to create a partition on your Mac that can be formatted by the Windows installer for the purpose of installing Windows.
The best way to get all the pieces (such as the Apple hardware Windows drivers) is to insert a Leopard installer DVD while you are booted to Windows. The Apple Windows drivers installer will run. One result will be a Startup Disk pane will be installed in your Windows Control Panel. Neat stuff, eh? Not sure if that will run on non-Apple hardware.

alfredb - Feb 26, 2008 - 5:10 pm

Of course I should have mentioned that in Disk Utility the drive is there - perfectly visible. Same in the Finder. Just not in Startup Disk. WAAAAAH!

DeltaMac - Feb 26, 2008 - 5:30 pm

The only difference that I can see - if you are using that Celeron, and Windows 2000 as your profile suggests - OS X and the Startup Disk doesn't likely see a boot drive with a system that old. As you may know, the Boot Camp Utility requires Win XP or newer, so I would expect the the Startup Disk pane will not see the older Windows as a bootable disk.

Another reason to be using a Mac, eh?
- Dale

alfredb - Feb 27, 2008 - 12:01 am

Never thought of the age of the OS being a factor. I don't have a copy of XP now - I'll have to get one and try it. Thanks.

As for the hardware.......I have 3 Intel Macs already....

ps...sometimes it seems like Macs are better designed to run Windows than PC's.....!

DeltaMac - Feb 27, 2008 - 7:01 am

Now you have it!