[WinMac] Installing NT [WAS:Re: recommended NT lists or sites??]

Daniel L. Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Sun, 18 Jul 1999 14:09:38 -0500

        Been there, done that (formatting a HDD on a running
machine)... Sometimes
it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I've had it fail with Boot Device Not
Found error with IDE, and occasionally even with SCSI.

        Here's what I do with big single drive NT machines:

        I'll set aside ~512 MB at the start of the disk with FDISK,
format it to
FAT16, then install a MINIMUM installation of NT/Workstation, usually in a
directory called "NTHelper"... And I'll LEAVE this partition FAT16.

        Then, I'll patch it to Service Pack 3 (needed for smooth NTFS
formatting);

        Next, from the running copy of NT/W on the C: partition I'll
go into Disk
Administrator and create a single partition with the remaining space MINUS
8 MEGABYTES;

        I'll then format this partition to NTFS with a 4 kilobyte cluster size;

        Next, I'll gather the drivers needed and put them at the root of the C:
drive in folders with simple to remember names like "MATROX", "MYLEX",
"SYMBIOS", "INTEL", and so forth. If I'm not sure of the quality of a given
driver, then I can test it now;

        Finally, I'll install the "production" copy of NT/Workstation
or NT/Server
on the big NTFS partition; and during the GUI setup point to the drivers in
the C:\INTEL (or whatever) directory.

        WORD OF CAUTION/LANDMINE #1:

        If you are dealing with NT driver level RAID sets, make SURE your
"NTHelper" installation is also NT/Server (if this is for a server), i.e.
you want both installations to be either NT/W or NT/S... Otherwise you can
hose the RAID when switch-booting between NT/W and NT/S if you don't take
the RAID offline!

        WORD OF CAUTION/LANDMINE #2:

        Using CONVERT.EXE to convert a FAT16 partition to NTFS yields
a partition
with an easily fragmented cluster size of 512 bytes - NFG.

        WORD OF CAUTION/LANDMINE #3:

        You'll need a *separate* partition with at least a gig of space if you
plan on installing NT5/Win2k: It likes to be the sole owner of its partition!

        WORD OF CAUTION/LANDMINE #4:

        Pull out al but 32 MB of RAM when running the installer: This will keep
the pagefile size manageable and stop possible partition out-of-space errors.

        Hope this helps!
        Dan

At 11:47 AM 7/17/99 -0400, ROMeyn wrote:
>>i am trying to learn/figure out how to install NT server to an
>>active disk partition larger than 4 gig so that it doesn't hang/not
>>boot after the cd-rom is taken out/machine restarts just before the
>>GUI phase commences...

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