XP Dual boot (With another version of XP)

[Rosco]

Hi, here's my problem that I posted on another forum

I want to install 2 different versions of XP on the same PC, so I can have one for uni, and the other for everything else.
It's been ages since I have set up a dual boot machine and I'm kinda lost to be honest.
I have set up 2 primary partitions, and installed XP on each one, but I want to hide the other OS partition so I cant see it. How do I do this??? Should I install one on a primary partition and the other on a logical partition???
Also, when I installed windows on the D drive, I went to install drivers on that OS (I had allready done this on my C drive), it told me that some files were already on the C drive, and did I want to overwrite them (I cancelled the install), so I think I have done something wrong.
I tried googling for some info, but I can only find info about Dual booting XP with a different OS, not with another version of XP.

Any help greatly appreciated.

But things have changed slightly since then. I deleted both partitions and created a 30 GB C:\ drive to which I installed XP. I now have all my apps installed on this OS, and it is fully configured.
I have 20GB of unallocated space left on my HDD. What type of partition should I make this space and how do I go about setting things up as I want???


Sorry if the post is a bit long winded, and thanx very much for your help.
Rosco

[Alan]

I seemed to have missed your original post Anyway, as for what type of partition you should have is your choice.
Here is a link that compares NTFS against FAT32.
As far as I know, if you install two versions of XP on one drive, they will 'see' each other, so if you want to have two versions of XP, you really need another drive. I will research this info a little but feel fairly sure its right.

AND THIS IS WHAT I FOUND:

The safest and most convenient way of doing what you want is to invest in two hard disk caddies from www.rlsupplies.co.uk. For around £16 plus postage you’ll be able to fit the caddy’s housing in a spare 5.25-inch drive bay and place your two hard drives in separate caddies. Make sure both are set to Master and that your BIOS is set to auto-detect your drive channels, and you switch OSes simply by powering down your machine and then switching the drive caddies – all without having to open your PC.

[Rosco]

Thanx for the reply Alan, and my other post was posted on a completely different board, so no need to worry. lol
I intend to format the other partition as NTFS, but I dont know if it should be a logical or primary partition.
As far as I remember the PC can only see one primary partition at a time (The active one), so the drives should hide each other when you boot up on the active drive. However, this seemed not to be the case when I did it this way yesterday.
All the info I can find on the web is all about dual booting XP with another OS, not with another version of XP like I want to do.
Thanx for the reply Alan.


Edit: Unfortunately your solution isnt really feasible as my OS runs from a RAID array, and I don't really want to comprimise the performance of the system.
I kinda need to do it with partitions.
I think I may have to invest in a 3rd party boot manager like boot magic.