How to set up Windows on "J" Drive

the easy way is to take out any drive that is not the one you are working on and partition it as you see fit. Return other drives when done.

The not so easy, but still do able way is to leave the other drives in, partition the new drive using Gparted or the like, and be sure to label your partitions. That little extra 3 seconds of typing can save loads of confusion on the install process.
Then you can install as you see fit. then once you go into the first boot after driver install, go to disk management and manually assign drive letters. That will allow you to set the drive letters as you see fit.
 
@ Wolfeking : Yeah, that is fairly easy to do, and I do label ever partition so as to be able to keep track of what is what; BUT I want a Windows install on "J" Drive, and unless I am mistaken, using "Disk manager" WILL change the letters on the drives however I want them; BUT it will not alter the registry entries from C:\ to J:\ . So How do I go about setting up windows on "J"
 
If you install XP to this "j" drive while all other drives are still plugged in, you will be installing a dual boot setup. Which means you'll get a option at startup to what operating system you want to boot to. If you want this install to be independant of the others then all other drives must be unplugged before installing XP. Which this is the way you are wanting to go I believe. Then you can change the bios to boot from this other drive which he won't know that its there.
 
There are easy ways to deal with this situation, it is you that make it so complicated.
If I were you. I simple make a clone drive to the first hard drive. Anything hapen to the first drive(bootable) just clone back from the clone.
I have done with all my computers which I upgrade the hard drive to a larger ones. I keep the original drives in a safe place, Any computer crash or get infected I simple just clone back the drive. so I don't have to go through windows and softeware installation again.

Cheers.
 
In most clone software you have choice to select source and destination drives. You just have to remember which is which. You can determine the drive by manufacture or the size of the drive, also you don't have to bootup with the hard drive. you can bootup with optical drive or usb drives to do drive clone or partition clone.

In windows, it normally see the boot disk as c drive. if your clone software allow you to clone from c: to other drive then you don't hasve to worry which letter it assigned you.


Cheers.
 
I guess you just like the hard work, so don't complain:D.

Since you have 3 hard drives in that computer, and your goal is to protect the original system disk and her son's system disk. all you have to do is install the OS in the two harddrive in two different times. disable the main one on the bios when her son is using the computer to boot from the son's disk.
Make the third drive a system image from the son's disk also backup data drive from main drive.

If the son's drive get mess up. clone it back from the third drive. how hard is that? may be just time consuming, but you can clone it in the night everyone is sleep.
Cheers.:cool:
 
From what I understand by reading your posts. your goal is to do two independant boot disk, boot one at a time while the other is disabled. That is what I think you wanted to do, correct me if I am wrong. if that is what you want then just install them one at a time so they can boot individually. that won't have to do with any drive letter changes. but if that is not what you want then please ignore me and do what is suppose to do.
Cheers.
 
That is when the third drive come in either internal or external. all you have to do is parted in two partitions and make both images to the third drive in each partition. so you can clone back when disaster strikes.
Cheers.
 
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