multiple win 2000 installations on disk 1&2

managed three installations on disk 1, got cocky and decided to put some more on disk 2, crunch. I get the message that W2K cant find a suitable partition on disk one to go ahead; so. Back to square one with clean disks. I set up dd and os sel on partition 1-W2K-ntfs-5G, created a 100M partition on the same disk and set about installing W2K on the second hd, it all worked, but now the original 5G with acronis in it is not available-greayed out and showing as unpartitioned, and OS Sel is gone away too, using the recovery disk and puting a new set-up on the partition of the second hd does not give me the original back, but everything on disk 2 is just fine and dandy. Now I know I'm doing something, or not, as the case may be, so tell me oh wise and generous members, where should I put the acronis software in the first place to make it accessible from all my fine new installations. Havn't had this much fun since I tried hyperos, and discovered that was a definate 'work in progress' scenario.

 

Under most circumstances and as long as the stars line up right it may not really matter which disk you install OS Selector on, but the first disk your BIOS sees is the prudent choice. I've found it best to also install it in its very own partition, with nary another thing in it. I've also found it less trouble prone if the partition of choice is a Primary and formatted FAT. I know about the claims you can install it anywhere on the planet and can use NTFS format, yada, yada, yada, but my experience is if you want it to work with the least probability of trouble, the way to go is as I described.

Its also a good idea to give the partition some space to hold the system files that OSselector copies into wherever it lives when it boots an OS instance and you have selected the option to protect the other OS's. I know with 100% certainty you do exercise that option, of course, because you wish to have a care free life and don't like taking stupid unnecessary risk (department of redundancy department there, like so what unnecessary risk ain't stupid? but at least it ain't "pin number" or "SWAT team" da...da...da...brain dead oblivious, as in without the slightest frikin clue).

Now then, you have 1 OS installed and you have OS selector installed. No other OS installs yet. So you fire up OS Selector and set the "floppy drive" boot to point at the partition you wish to install your next OS into, set all the properties to suit, then make sure the target partition is "active", and then boot to your OS install disk or CD (either one will work), and point the install at the target partition. OS Selector will recognize it and everything is ducky.
Piece of cake, as they say.

 

I got there, thanks for the pointers