I want to put 2 operating systems (OS's) on one hard drive, sometimes
booting to 1 OS, sometimes booting to the other. I know you can do
this by partitioning the hard drive, but partitioning is something I
did not understand a week ago. I have obtained Partition Magic 8.0 &
have been combing through the User's Manual, the Help files, & googling
the subject in newsgroups. I have learned a lot, but have a lot of
blanks I need to fill in to make sure I do this correctly, so I would
appreciate any & all help you can provide!

I currently have Windows 2000 Pro on my hard drive. I have yet to
obtain the restore disk for 2000, so I need this partitioning to be
done & not wipe out 2000. I also want to install XP. Following are
the things I have learned & related questions.

In Partition Magic (PM), they use a bar-graph type of graphic to
illustrate the partitions on the drive. On my drive, the far left area
of the bar is the 2000 OS. The OS is in the only partition currently
on the drive. Of that partition, about 4.5GB are used out of the 19GB
on that partition. This partition is using a FAT32 file system. At
the far right end of the bar is 7.8 MB of unallocated space.

I think what I want to do is reduce the existing partition (with 2000
on it) to about 7.5 GB, right? I believe that partition will sit at
the far left of the bar graph. Then do I make a second primary
partition that starts at the 7.5GB where the Win2K partition stops and
take that second partition up to 15 GB (7.5GB for the second partition)
that will hold XP?

While searching through newsgroup posts on this subject, someone said
to create 2 more partitions (in addition to the 2 primary partitions
for the OS's), one for files created in Win2K & one for files created
in WinXP. This sounds good, but I have some questions.

1) The Win2K file system will be FAT32. I'd like to be able to read
all files from either OS. That means I would have to use FAT32 for all
partitions. Is there any drawback to NOT using the NTFS file system
for the XP files? And is it OK to use FAT32 for the primary partition
that XP will be installed on?

2) I have also read that I should install my applications under each
OS. In other words, if I want to use MS Office from either OS, I need
to install it under Win2K & XP. If I do this, and set things up like
I've described up to this point, will an update of, say, an Excel file
update all versions of that file? I'm rather confused about this, but
the bottom line is that, if possible, I want to be able to work on a
file from either OS & not have a newer & older version of the same
files at different places on the hard drive.

3) Regarding making partitions for files (one partition for each OS's
created files): should I make one extended partition & then divide
that up into logical partitions or should I do make 2 extended
partitions, and then use logical partitions inside those extended
partitions? Or are there other options?

I have more questions, but I'm going to stop here for now, since
information I glean from these questions would likely change or answer
my additional questions.

I know I'm asking a lot here, so I want to thank in advance anyone who
can contribute help. If there are any questions or clarifications I
need to make, please post them & I will respond quickly. Thank you!

Sorry for the double post--I have no idea how that happened!