computer whiz anyone?

[historian]

I bought a Hitachi 650 gig hd. I want to partition it in 3 so i can each partition as a boot for the previous systems in case they die. Any suggestions for good software for this and for copying the system from computer A to partition A and so on? Also, if this is successful, and i need to boot via bios, will the cd drive (d) appear or e, f , g - (the other partitions).

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Post this in the lounge. There are some remarkably gifted

computer gurus there. Seriously. I had the Trojan from Hell a couple weeks back and my IT guy in NYC and the one here by me couldn't help me, but the lounge did.

Good luck.

[LakeSamish706]

2. Look at Partition Magic 8... It works well for this. Only problem, if you are running...

Windows Vista, you might have a problem with Partition Magic.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. It's Kind Of Complicated

I think you'll need something like GRUB (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/), which will let you select the partition to boot into. As to creating the partitions, you can use Partition Magic or the free (and excellent) GPARTED which is basically a clone of Partition Magic. You can get GPARTED as part of the System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page).

As to how to put all of these parts together, I'm not sure... but I think those are the right parts.

Good luck!

[BlueJazz]

4. " i can each partition as a boot for the previous systems in case they die"

?????????????

I can help but am not sure what you want to do.

Do you just want to partition the drive and have a separate OS on each drive ??

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

5. Good point...

" i can each partition as a boot for the previous systems in case they die"

Like, if system on first system dies, then maby go to another system?
What if the first system dies because hard drive failing, the others systems will fail also...

[historian]

11. yes

i want 3 partitions then i want to move e different systems onto the partitions. I wanted to know which software you could recommend but im also unsure as to the following: assuming i have to go into the bios to boot from one of those partitions will be shown as an alternative or only cd rom drive?

[patriotvoice]

12. The BIOS doesn't choose partitions from which to boot, only whole drives.

Choosing a partition to boot is the job of a boot loader. like grub (recommended). See my message below regarding recommended software for the ghosting operation.

[patriotvoice]

6. So you're wanting to ghost 3 separate computer systems onto this one drive?

So that if the drive in one of those systems fails, you have a backup on this drive? For a novice user, I'd recommend Partition Magic and Norton Ghost. Want to be a little more expert: use parted then dd across ssh (tricky, but doable). Remember you'll need to perform this periodically to keep the disk contents synchronized, so make a "Scheduled Task" or cronjob as appropriate.

From a reliability standpoint, why not just RAID the 3 computer systems and use this drive as a standard backup (no particular partitioning needed)?

[catnhatnh]

7. When I saw your thread title...

I thought "Good Idea" but I was afraid I'd be electrocuted.....

[Canuckistanian]

8. My first thought too

With Microsoft products, it's hard not to reach for your zipper.

[gratuitous]

9. Yeah, I wanted to post a warning

Definitely make sure it's unplugged. Absolutely. For sure. Really. You'll thank me.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

10. Is that like cheese whiz?