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9:59 am
January 4, 2012
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gone8to1248
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Post edited 10:01 am – January 4, 2012 by gone8to1248
I would like to build a new computer to give to a friend of mine and was thinking about using you Dual Boot system and running Windows XP Proffesional 32bit and Windows 7 64bit on it. I was going to start with 16gigs of ram which the Windows 7 can handle, but what will happen when I try to start p the Windows XP 32bit only being able to handle less than 4 gigs of ram? Will I have a problem there. My reasonning for doing this is so that he can still run his earlier 32bit programs on this computer but yet still have the speed in Windows7 64bit. I will be using a Sabertoth990FX motherboard and a Amd Phenom llx6 1090T 3.2GHZ processor. The primary use for this computer will be for down loading music and working with pictures. I will also be installing 3 hard drives of which 2 of them will be used to store his data,1 for his music and 1 for his pictures in case of a system malfunction or loss of the operating system drive. Thanks any help or thoughts would be appreciated. By the way my first computer was a IBM Model4 Bussiness computer that was given to me. All DOS, 64k of memory and 2 big 5 1/4 floppy drives. It got me hooked on computers! I'm 64yrs old now!
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10:18 am
January 4, 2012
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Craig Chamberlin
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64! Nice! Welcome to the forum.
You're strategy is solid and it is exactly what I would do. There will be no concerns with running Windows 32 bit with 16 Gigabytes of RAM installed, remember Windows simply allocates memory until it runs out of Bit space so you should be maxed out with 4 Gigabytes on your Windows XP machine. 4 Gigabytes will cover more than enough application load under Windows XP.
Sounds like you are building a solid system and it looks like fun :) Be sure to swing by and let us know how it goes when you tackle your project.
Also, there are other ways to do dual boot when Windows Vista or 7 are involved. If you install Windows 7 first you can actually install Windows XP later and it should allow you to create an automatic dual boot setup which may simplify your strategy.
Personally I recommend this guide to dual boot Windows Vista or 7 and Windows XP operating systems. My guide is typically only for legacy operating systems anymore.
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9:41 pm
January 6, 2012
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gone8to1248
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Craig thanks for the fast reply. As I start to build this thing I'll probrably be asking for more help from you with it. I have watched a lot of your videos and read a lot of your postings on tese things and find them easy to follow. I'm planning on putting in a floppy drive for making boot disk and repair disks, is this a good idea? I see where you also say to burn some of this stuff on DVD's bt will floppys work as well? I normally put in a DVD reader as well as a DVD burner. That way I'm not watching DVDs in the burner but just on the player. My plans are to have 1 dvd reader,2 dvd burners, 1 photo card reader,1 floppy drive. The unit I have now has 2 cd burners,1 cd reader,1dvd reader,1dvd burner,1 floppy drive and a Photo card reader. I have this in an Antec Server case about 29" high. To bad they don't make these anymore but I have 2 of them already. Will keep you posted.
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4:02 am
January 7, 2012
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Kazuki
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Welcome to the forum as well!
You seem to have a great start to your computer build here since you seem to know what you want for OS purposes and hard drive purposes. It sounds like a great build and I hope to hear more about it as you go on (maybe post a picture of it finished at the end?). Computers are awesome aren't they? ^_^
Now, you say you are planning on putting a floppy drive in there for making boot disks and repair disks. I definitely suggest making those since they can save you a lot of heartache when something does go wrong. However, I would NOT go with floppy disks. To be honest, floppy disks just can't hold the amount of information a CD or a DVD can. The smallest flash drives they have now can store more memory than the average floppy. The best floppy disk you can get right now, which they are hard to get by the way, can only hold 240 Mb of data. That isn't that much. That said, the Windows 7 operating system requires over 10x that amount to even store the compressed uninstalled package of that OS. So for repair disks, use regular DVD's. As for the floppy drive in the computer, you can definitely put it in there if you do have something that still runs of floppy, but you will rarely see any floppy's anymore.
So for recap,
1. Awesome job building the computer! You are doing a great job!
2. Repair disks are a must. Do it!
3. Don't use floppy's. If you can stay away from them. They can't store very much information at all.
4. Keep us posted! Ask questions! If we can help you make this the best possible machine ever, the more power to you!
Thanks again! Hope to see you around the forums and see the finished product!
Kazuki
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9:39 am
January 16, 2012
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Craig Chamberlin
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I usually always recommend keeping a floppy drive in a system because it is easier to create hard drive diagnostic boot disks and such, plus it is only 9 dollars or so for a drive, good to have as a just in case. Of course, as Kazuki stated, it is better to use CD media when you can for your bootable diagnostic utilities.
Let us know how your system progresses!
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2:48 am
February 4, 2012
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gone8to1248
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Post edited 2:49 am – February 4, 2012 by gone8to1248
Well it's getting closer with the new computer. I picked up a new Cool Master 932HAF full Tower Case from CompUSA the other day and now have the Motherboard Sabertooth 990fx, the DVD Burners 2 of them, 1 Internal All-In-1 Card Reader sitting here. I up-graded to an AMD 1100T Processor from the 1090T I was going to use. I'm waiting for my Corsair Modular 1050watt PSU to get here and I need to pick-up the hard drives yet. I have been thinking about putting in a Solid State Hard Drive 120gig for my boot drive. My question is can I make this solid state thing a dual boot drive like a normal hard drive and would 120 gig be enough. By the way I'm looking at going with a GeForce 560ti video card at this time. As far as a floopy drive goes I'm think an external floppy I can plug in if I need it. Once this is together I'll come back on here and get some help setting up the main drive to dual boot Windows 7 64 bit and Windows XP Proffesional 32bit
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12:22 am
February 8, 2012
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Kazuki
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Well, an SSD works much like a hard drive. It installs the same, so there should be no reason why you can't dual boot off of an SSD. Sounds great so far! Loving the updates! Keep it up!
Kazuki
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8:34 am
February 25, 2012
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gone8to1248
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I have now installed the Power supply,motherboard and processor and 16gigs of ram into the case along with the 2 dvd burners and the all-in-one card reader/writer. The case came with a front panel set-up with 4-USB 2.0 ports, 1- firewire port,1-e-SATA port, 2-USB 3.0 ports. The card reader also has 3-USB 2.0 ports,1-e-SATA port,and 1-USB 3.0 ports in it besides all the different card slots. For a Floppy drive I went with an external 1.44 floppy drive that runs on USB 2.0.
I have deceided to go with a Corsair Force 3 180gig SSD for my main drive that I'll make a dual boot on. Now I have a big question for you all. I was going to go with Windows 7 Proffesional 64 bit and Windows XP Proffesional 32 bit for my 2 systems. With XP not having support anymore would puttting Windows 7 Proffesional 32 bit work as well for running older 16-32 bit programs. I know Vista will be supportted until 2017 but I can purchase a Windows 7 Proffesional that will come with both 64 and 32 bit disks. I don't know a lot about Windows 7 but will the 32 bit program still allow older programs to run on it?
The next question is about the 2 1tb drives I'll be putting in. Does it make sense to partion each of these drives into 2 equal drives call one of the F&G and the other one H&I. F would be named Photos and G would be named Music and those 2 would be where his data is saved to. Then I would create a RAID Mirror for drive F&H and then create a second RAID MIRROR for drives G&I. This would give me a back-up to both the music and the photos incase of a hard drive failure or a system failure. Does that make sense? Any help on these issues would be greatly appretiated. Thanks
Bernard
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7:50 am
March 9, 2012
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Craig Chamberlin
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You will want to avoid 32 bit at all costs as the memory cap for the operating system is 4 gigabytes. 32 bit applications will run on 64 bit, Microsoft has done a good job with this, it uses a 32 bit emulation technology. They had to in order to compete with their own Windows XP product.
As for your RAID configuration:
You will want to set up your RAID to mirror the first hard drive to the second, not partition to partition. After all, if the hard drive fails, what is to become of the backup? In this instance I would suggest mirroring your first 1 TB drive to the second and partitioning the first drive however you wish. If it were me, I would just separating everything by folders rather than partitions, but really it is personal preference at this point.
Good looking system! Keep up the good work!
As a side note, given the horsepower of your machine, you may want to consider running a Windows XP virtual environment instead of dual booting using the free Oracle VirtualBox software. This will let you run Windows XP on top of Windows 7 (or any other operating system for that matter)
The downside? Virtual Machines do not support graphics drivers, the drivers are emulated, so you can forget about gaming in a Virtual Machine.
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