PowerQuest's PartitionMagic, however, claims to be able to work with NTFS-only installations. First, it installs directly into NT (unlike the other products). From there, you copy its main executable file from your hard disk to a floppy, then reboot with a DOS bootable-floppy in Drive A (you ought to be able to find one of those lying around; else, you can make one from someone else's computer with the format a:/s command). Then you can slip in the Partition Magic floppy, and run the executable.
Does this work? Well, it's the only commercial option available for an all-NTFS (or non-FAT) setup, and if it doesn't work well, worst case scenerio is that you'd have to reformat your hard disk, which you were going to have to do anyway. It retails for a little over $50.
Further Reading
It's thrilling that a utility exists like Partition Magic that will allow for the creation of, say, an EXT2-formatted partition from an NTFS-only drive, so you can add OSes without necessarily having to have a FAT partition (as C, or otherwise).
However, what OSes can read (much less write) to NTFS partitions anyway? You might want to keep that in mind when considering your partitioning options.
Apparently, working with NT and Linux on the same computer is not all that uncommon, as there are many documents on the net regarding using either NT's boot loader or Linux' LILO for direct booting between the two.
On that note, there is a very-alpha version of NTFS for Linux, which allows you to mount an NTFS partition, read-only, in Linux.
More NT/Linux articles include the mini HOW TO NT OS Loader + Linux; and Windows NT Magazine's Dual-booting NT and Linux.
If you're interested in trying out the $70 BeOS, there are installation tips and more in the BeOS/Intel FAQ. In particular, How do I boot the BeOS? describes the basics of booting Be, and includes a reference to booting Be from NT's boot manager.
Note that at this time, as cool as BeOS looks (and you've just got to read all the great things the BePeople say about NT in their FAQs!), it doesn't support SCSI disks! However, SCSI support is planned for the next major release of BeOS.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Tracey Kirkpatrick-Pritchett's Windows NT Workstation topic, please visit the Discussions page.