Resolved Letter Assignment when duel booting win98 - xp

I have 2 hard drives. Drive 0 is 250gb and drive 1 is 40gb. Drive 0 is partitioned into 5 volumes. C- is primary active, running win98se, with extened partition with volumes D - E - F - G. All formated with FAT32. Drive 1 is extended partition with volumes H - I - J - K all FAT32. Each drive have programs and data on them expect volume G on drive 0, which I left empty to install XP to. When installing XP onto volume G, I want to change this volume to use NTFS partition. I have read that win98 can't see or read NTFS. What I am unclear of is, when win98 boots up, what happens to the Letter Assignment in win98. If win98 can't see the NTFS partition, does it keep it's partition LETTER G and win98 just marks G as unknown, or will win98 change the drive letters, because it can't see it, making drive 0, C - D - E - F and drive 1, G - H - I - J ? If this happens I won't be able to run programs I have on the other volumes, because of the letter change. Does anyone know how this works with the letter assignment?

 

Win98 doesn't see NTFS partitions, so it will NOT see the G partition. Therefore H will become G, I will be H and J will be I.
If you want the XP partition to be NTFS, then this is what I'd do, using a partition manager (there are lots of free ones around):
Chop a bit off the end of either F or G, format it as Fat32 so it will become G once your present G, formatted as NTFS, has become invisible. After installing XP you'll still see the same 8 drives in the same sequence when running Win98. Only difference, your empty G partition has shrunk. And when in XP you'll have an extra little partition to play with.

 

Thank you Roncesvalles for responding. Let me see if I understand you correctly. My empty G volume on drive 0, is 105gb. So I repartition, or resize it and make another FAT32 partition, say around 5gb and leave the other as 100gb. At first, in win98, it will add a another volume letter H on drive 0. So second drive 1 will be I - J- K - L then I install the NTFS on G volume which isn't seen in win98 and my H will become G again when running win98 and my second drive 1 goes back to the way it was with H - I - J - K then all the programs I have on my second drive 1 will have the right drive letters again.
Then when I install Xp on the NTFS and boot up XP will see all 10 volumes.

 

I believe I can use Super Fdisk to do this. I just delete the G partition on drive 0, because it is empty, and repartition it into 2 volumes, which would be G and H (both FAT32), beacuse I didn't see an option with SuperFdisk for NTFS, I would have to use the XP Cd to change G volume into NTFS.

 

I am very sorry. I misstated my first posting.
Drive 0 has 5 volumes on it and drive 1 have 4 volumes.

Drive 0 is C - D - E - F - G
Drive 1 is H - I - J - K

 

When you set up XP you will be given the option to format the bigger XP partition as NFTS and then instal XP into it.
The only thing I'm not sure about is: will XP be bootable as there are 150 GB before it.
There was no problem when you said G was the first partition on your second hard disk, but as last on disk one? I somehow doubt it.

 

Roncesvalles, from all I have read about duel booting, you can install XP in any volumes as long as there is a primary boot volume on the hard drive for XP to install it's files it needs to boot and run the boot menu. Which is my C volume on drive 0. My second hard drive doesn't have a primay volume on it, just and extended volume with logical volumes.

 

You have nothing to lose, just give it a try and see. If it works, fine, if not, repartition drive G into 5 partitions G, H, I, J and K. Then move the partitions from your 2nd disk into the corresponding new partitions on your 1st disk. Format the 40 GB disk as primary NFTS and install XP on it. That will give you a proper dual boot without any problematics.

 

Thank you Roncesvalles, that is another good idea, which I didn't think of. I might have to purchase another larger hard drive in order to do that, because I would like XP to have more room than 40gb because of some video downloads.