Using two OS's

[bobbo]

I had a computer made for me. I had them put in NT and windows 98 and dual boot when I start the computer. I have a 10g drive and a 20g drive both I believe are 7200 udma drives. (At least I asked for that).
They put 98 on a 2g partition on the 10g drive and NT on a 2g partition on the 20g drive. I want to use NT with ntracks.
My question is: Did they place these OS's in the right place in the computers drives?
Does it matter where they are installed, or would it be better to have the NT system and the 98 system on the smaller 10g drive? Or does it really make any difference?
Also, should I be using NTFS file system for the storage of music, or FAT?
Its a pentium III 500MHz with 224 MB memory.
Thanks
bobbo

 

[Jon X]

Sounds like a great setup. Plenty of memory and fast drives. I've heard those 7200RPM UDMA/66 drives compete with many of the fast SCSI drives, and can really fly when hooked to a UDMA/66 capable IDE controller.

I would use NTFS for the music storage partitions. NTFS is faster than even FAT32 on very large partitions. NTFS is also more reliable, and definitely more security options are built in. The only thing is Win98 won't be able to see the NTFS partitions directly. To solve that I would create another FAT partition from within NT in case there was anything you ever wanted to share between the two. The current drive/OS setup you have will work, and is probably the best thing if you plan to keep most stuff separate between the two OSs. Check to see if one of the drives is rated faster, or operates faster than the other. Sounds like both are going to be the same from what you described, but if not, put both OSs on the faster drive (along with their swap files) so you are always booting from that one.

Post back how your setup works if you get time. I'd like to hear how that kind of computing horsepower handles under NT as an audio workstation. Also, what are you using for a soundcard/input device?

Good luck.

 

[bobbo]

Thanks for the reply. I am going to use a midiman delta 1010 when I get it working. I ordered one over a month ago and it did work until I put the drivers in for the windows 98 OS. Then all of a sudden (I'm not sure if it is a coincidence or not) all 8 inputs were acting like they were peaking or clipping with nothing actually feeding the inputs. It was weird. The power light on the delta 1010 didn't work anymore either.
So after getting another delta and soundcard I tried it again, and same thing. Now I am waiting for a power supply from midiman to see if that was the problem. They told me if that doesn't fix it, then it might be a bad OS installation. I hope something works so I can get recording. Its not easy to wait.
I think it should work pretty good though, and I'll write back to let you know.
Take it easy.
bobbo

 

[Slackmaster2K]

My 2 cents:

The following link might just make you very happy. I don't know if it's legal but it doesn't appear to be a warez site. The drivers do work...
http://www.radek.ampr.org/MenuOther.html

Right now it sounds like both of your operating systems might be sitting in FAT16 partitions. You should really check. Use the disk administrator in NT to see where you stand. FAT16 is limited to 2GB in DOS/Win and 4GB in NT. FAT32 is where you want to be if you want all of your data to be shareable between OS's (see the above link).

In any event, don't stick your OS's on the faster drive, leave the fast drive for recording.

I have NT and 98 on the same disk using the FAT32 drivers. Works great. I too am using n-Track, but not a powerhouse machine like you've got.

Slackmaster 2000

[This message has been edited by Slackmaster2K (edited 12-29-1999).]

 

[bobbo]

Its working. I can't believe it. The new power supply came in and that did it. Also, I found that NT32 file system thing in my NT system, those computer guys had already put it in knowing that I would be needing it. I wish they would have told me though, the sneaks.
Hope it keeps working. I really want to start recording. Thanks for the help folks.
bobbo