Gaming Is this a stupid idea?

[FireEmblemGuy]

Would it be a stupid idea for me to do a triple-install on my laptop with only one hard drive in it? It would definitely be awesome to be able to boot into Vista Ultimate, Windows 7 Beta, or a hacked Mac OSX, but then all the partitioning and such might be- and probably is- too much of a strain on the poor hard drive.

Thoughts?

 

[Foolio]

I don't see how partitioning the drive would put any more stress on it than normal. The only issue I see with the configuration is the lack of Linux...

 

[Banger]

Its not like you will be running all 3 OS's at the same time so this so called "stress" you are talking about would be the same as just 1 OS was on the hard drive.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

Huh. I always figured it was bad for the drive if I made too many partitions... that's why I like to keep no more than two OS's on one drive.

And I already ave an old Vaio that I use as a Linux machine... although at some point I might want to upgrade beyond DamnSmallLinux...

 

[jesuschristmonke]

I don't see why you would want Win 7 & Vista at the same time.

Or MacOSX at all.

Want until Win 7 is released and on SP 2. And maybe have a separate partition for Ubuntu Linux.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

I like having Vista because it's something to fall back on if something goes wrong, and I believe my built-in wifi and webcam drivers won't work with any non-Vista OS, except maybe XP. W7, though, is already looking to be better than Vista currently is.

And then OSX because I have to do a lot of work with Macs and Mac-exclusive programs in my media class, and being able to use some of them, especially the video editors, outside of school would be amazingly useful, since I'm always coming up tight on deadlines and it's too much hassle to risk trying to sign out and take home an insanely expensive iMac from the media room.

 

[DokiDoki98]

I did it =P

 

[unknownworlder]

Well, it depends on the size of your hard drive. If you have at least 250 GB of storage, id say its enough for three of them, but I don't see why you would want THREE OS's. You will need windows, because most programs use it, but you can emulate windows on mac.

But Im a mac hater here. So I would only go with Windows Vista Ultimate because Windows 7 would obviously have a whole hell of a lot of bugs.


EDIT: Didn't realize it was Windows 7.

 

[DokiDoki98]

But Im a mac hater here. So I would only go with Windows Vista Ultimate because Windows 7 would obviously have a whole hell of a lot of bugs.

im a mac fan


ITS ON

 

[nicman000]

Doesn't look stupid at all, I would suggest making backups first in case you F it up.

 

[xdrk09]

I've seen it done before. Just don't make your partitions too small... I tried installing Vista on a 25gb part... bad idea.

Shoot for about 50gb per partition if you can.

 

[m-p{3}]

You can have up to four primary partitions on a single hard-drive. An extended partition can contain any numbers of sub-partitions. What you could do is have a primary partition with NTFS with Vista installed on it, create an extended partition and inside this one create the amount of partitions you need to install the other Operating Systems.

The only thing that could be tricky is managing the boot loader, but if you know what you are doing you should be able to set it right.

I've seen it done before. Just don't make your partitions too small... I tried installing Vista on a 25gb part... bad idea.

Shoot for about 50gb per partition if you can.

I have a customized Windows XP installations that use three separate partitions.

The C: partition that holds all the system files is 10GB,
The D: partition that holds all the programs is about 80GB, and
The E: partition that holds all the documents is about 25GB.

This has the benefit of reducing data fragmentation, as well as making specific backup easier. If I need to only backup my documents, I only have to backup the E: partition.