Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stunaep on February 13, 2003, 02:42:02 pm

Title: Virtual HDDs and ****
Post by: Stunaep on February 13, 2003, 02:42:02 pm: Though I'm quite competent when it comes to hardware, software **** like this unfortunately leaves me deaf and blind.

Here's what I want to do:
Create two virtual drives out of my 60 GB HDD. a 55 GB NTFS partition, with WinXP installed, and one 5 GB FAT32 partition with either Win98 or a DOS opsys installed.

I've been looking around for software to accomplish, but I want the opinions of the more experienced peeps in here on how is the best way to do this, and what is the best soft to use.

Why would I want to do something like that, you ask? To run old DOS games like Betrayal at Krondor and System Shock, that's why.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on February 13, 2003, 02:59:39 pm: Mortal men are not meant to interfere with the arcane complexities of HDD partitioning.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 13, 2003, 03:00:51 pm: I'm Lenin.

And I want to play SS1
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on February 13, 2003, 03:10:39 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Stunaep
I'm Lenin.

And I want to play SS1

Lenin! My freind! I knew you'd support me, even when Stalin Hated me, I salute you, comrade.
Yours, Leon Trotsky.

Anyway, we all want to play SS1, but you can't have everything.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 13, 2003, 03:13:41 pm: I find, you did a nice job with those anti-Stalinist speeches, in the foreign countries Trotsky. Too bad you got killed, and didn't get embalmed. I never liked Stalin anyway. Too much mustache.

Sincerely
Lenin.

I think I found a good partition manager. Something from a company called Acronis. Now time for a defrag.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on February 13, 2003, 03:15:39 pm: Defragging is the bane of my life. Escpecially when you're half way through and your screen saver comes on, meaning you have to start over.:mad:
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Warlock on February 13, 2003, 03:24:16 pm: I swear I saw something about getting SS1 to run on Win98 and up in a Google search last week. You might want to look into it if you haven't.

Far as the HDD mess,....I just used the prog. that came with my Maxtor ,... but I've heard Partition Magic is pretty good.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 13, 2003, 03:34:47 pm: I run Windows XP. Sucka.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Darkage on February 13, 2003, 03:35:38 pm: I use partion magic 8 to make or remove partitions and convert them to NTFS or FAT32. Thats the best way. But you seem to want dual boot. I nerv actualy done that but here go's anyone corect me if i am wrong.

First create a fat32 partition install win98, then make a NTFS partition in windows using partition maigc or any other prog that can make NTFS partitions then install WinXP on the NTFS partition. Thats what i know/heard how to do it.

Hope this helps abit.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Warlock on February 13, 2003, 03:35:51 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Warlock
Win98 and up

*points out the words AND UP*

Sucka :P
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: deep_eyes on February 13, 2003, 03:37:24 pm: reformat the entire HD, use winxp disk to parition the amount of disk u want winxp-nt/fat32, then specify the partition of the smaller/remaining amount, install XP, then whenur done with that, install 98/95/Me (DOH!), and handle ur biznaas...
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Lonestar on February 13, 2003, 03:48:45 pm: Quote
Originally posted by deep_eyes
reformat the entire HD, use winxp disk to parition the amount of disk u want winxp-nt/fat32, then specify the partition of the smaller/remaining amount, install XP, then whenur done with that, install 98/95/Me (DOH!), and handle ur biznaas...

Partition Magic is good, but doesnt it costs money?
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Darkage on February 13, 2003, 05:35:42 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Lonestar

Partition Magic is good, but doesnt it costs money?

Yup.....
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stealth on February 13, 2003, 05:42:48 pm: depends where you get it

... some places give it cheaper than others.

shop around, don't just go buy it the first place you come to.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: CP5670 on February 14, 2003, 01:43:23 am: What problems are you all having with SS1? I used to be able to play it on an older Win95 machine, but it gives me EMS/XMS errors for 98 and ME (I can get into the menus, but when I start or load a game, it gives a string of errors and quits).

You know, is it possible to have a dual-boot partition that uses the good old DOS (6.2 or 7) itself?

I got Partition Magic 6 from my dad's workplace a while ago but never got around to really looking at its features.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Turnsky on February 14, 2003, 03:59:27 am: you should be able to find FDISK somewhere dude..

just look around
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Razor on February 14, 2003, 04:33:23 am: I am sorry but I didn't read the previous posts but I will try to answer this to you in a hurry.

I had the exact same problem like you did. First I would recommend you to divide your hdd like this:

5GB FAT32 (you may install your WINXP there)
and 2 x 25GB for games, progs and stuff.
DO NOT install Win 98. It is unstable and not reliable and don't use NTFS because if it gets screwed up, you will loose absolutely everything on your entire disk, while with FAT32 you will be able to recover your data. By the way, did I mention that with FAT32, you will be able to format your HDD easier and that it is operates some 30% faster than NTFS.

By the way about FDISK. Make a boot disk from a Win98 Operating System, put it into your WINXP machine, re-boot with the boot disk insterted in your floppy drive. Then you will enter the Command Prompt (the old DOS) and type:
a:
and then type:
fdisk
then you will enter the prog you need for your job. :)

One more thing. DO NOT INSTALL WIN98 on your system. It SUCKS! :no: Stick with Win XP. I am telling you this from my own experience.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Darkage on February 14, 2003, 04:58:32 am: Quote
Originally posted by Turnsky
you should be able to find FDISK somewhere dude..

just look around

If he wants to make a NTFS partition then he can't use FDISK:D
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Turnsky on February 14, 2003, 05:02:38 am: good point mind you win2k can make partitions during it's install..
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 14, 2003, 05:18:47 am: Razor, I agree completely, and undevotedly that Win98 sucks ass.

Unfortunately that is the only non-NT based opsys I have at hand, so I'll have to use that. I definately do not want another NTFS partition (NTFS+DOS=bad). I'll make it FAT32.

Thanks for the FDISK help thouhg, just what I needed
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Ulundel on February 14, 2003, 06:02:36 am: Well, I have a WinME disc here...
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 14, 2003, 06:06:13 am: I said... A non-NT system. One that has dos.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Ulundel on February 14, 2003, 06:08:48 am: WinME is absolutely non NT. It's basically Win98 third edition or something...
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: kode on February 14, 2003, 06:34:11 am: funny how ntfs always has worked flawlessly for me. or, even better than fat32, since ntfs has built-in error correction, and also is generally faster.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Warlock on February 14, 2003, 07:16:23 am: Quote
Originally posted by kode
funny how ntfs always has worked flawlessly for me. or, even better than fat32, since ntfs has built-in error correction, and also is generally faster.

I don't think he's having problems with the system.....just he's trying to play a game that's PRE-win98 ( Hell pre-win95 even I think)
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: kode on February 14, 2003, 07:56:30 am: Quote
Originally posted by Warlock

I don't think he's having problems with the system.....just he's trying to play a game that's PRE-win98 ( Hell pre-win95 even I think)

I know. my post was directed at razors bashing of ntfs.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Darkage on February 14, 2003, 08:37:59 am: FAT32 is no match for NTFS.

EDIT: I made a mistake:D now the post is right:D
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: kode on February 14, 2003, 08:52:17 am: Quote
Originally posted by Darkage
NTFS is no match for FAT32

I guess that depends on what you're using the disk for...
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 14, 2003, 09:26:07 am: well, it all ended with a reformat anyway.

Now I have a 50 GB NTFS disk, with WinXP and a 10GB FAT32 disk with Win98.

Thank you all for help-
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: DTP on February 14, 2003, 09:49:12 am: Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Defragging is the bane of my life. Escpecially when you're half way through and your screen saver comes on, meaning you have to start over.:mad:

thats why you defrag in fail-safe mode OR
use power defrag.

http://www.powerdefrag.com/
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: CP5670 on February 14, 2003, 11:06:07 am: The main problem with defragging is that you cannot do other things while going through the process. Also, the generic defragger than comes with Windows is crap; Norton's one is much better, although it has some problems too.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Stunaep on February 14, 2003, 12:14:34 pm: WOOHOO!!! After reformating another time, and installing PartitionMagic, everything works like a charm.

I created three partitions: 10GB NTFS, 10GB FAT32, 40GB NTFS.

Installed WinXP on the 10GB NTFS partition and Win98 on the 10GB partition, left the 40GB one for data.

*goes to happy place*;7
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Darkage on February 14, 2003, 12:51:24 pm: I am in the proces of burning my data to disc, and repartition my drives and install stuff i realy need. And make my drives orginasized. It's a total junk now.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Razor on February 15, 2003, 11:48:35 am: Quote
Originally posted by Stunaep

Thanks for the FDISK help thouhg, just what I needed

Hey no problem. If you need that disk, I can e-mail it to ya. By the way, you may also need some tools in order to make partitions. Like Partition Magic.
Title: Virtual HDDs and *ahem* other nice stuff
Post by: Razor on February 15, 2003, 11:49:55 am: Quote
Originally posted by Stunaep
WOOHOO!!! After reformating another time, and installing PartitionMagic, everything works like a charm.

I created three partitions: 10GB NTFS, 10GB FAT32, 40GB NTFS.

Installed WinXP on the 10GB NTFS partition and Win98 on the 10GB partition, left the 40GB one for data.

*goes to happy place*;7

Nice going. :yes: Go and have some good ol' fashion fun.