multi-boot windoze systems

[MakeItHappen 15]

anyone know how to preserve logical drive letters among several windoze os on the same system (a muliti boot system)?

eg what I called h: on NT becomes d: on Win2k and e: and XP.

Is there a way to synch them up to the same letter name across OSs or prevent the new os from reassigning letters?
Do I just used the disk manager to change that?
Will it choke if I change the drive letter for the boot partition?

If I run a defrag under one OS will it screw up the files reading/writing for the other OSs?

I keep data type files on drives that I defrag and all the constant files (applications, etc) on other drives.
What I want to do is install the same applications to the same drives/directories under several OSs. That way I won't have to duplicate the 'constant' stuff.
For instance, I'll install office to P:\ms\office under each os. I want the files to be in the exact same place, not triple redundancy. The data files get placed on other logical drives.
It's the same version of office for all OSs. (Yes I realize that I can change the path during the install to point to where the files are. It's easier to keep the drive letters the same across the OSs.)

I've updated database files (of many flavors) via different OSs and web servers without a problem. Has anyone seen any incompatibilities among the Windoze OS flavors?

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[Jumpah 0]

I've done what you are trying to do in the past. It works well in general, but keep your SP's and hotfixes in sync on each system. I had one 80GB HD with two partitions. Part 1 was C:, 2 was D:. C: had three diff OSs on it (something like \Windows, \WinWork, \WinGame). D: had all the progs that were shared.

If you've got the system already built, you should be able to change drive letters in each of your installations to be the same so long as you aren't modifying the system volume or boot partition.

Just go into Manage, Drive Management to make them consistent.

Edit: No, defrag won't hurt anything (in general...backup just in case ). And my work laptop runs two copies of XP and SUSE 9 on one disk. The order of installation in a multiboot could be important...I have always gone in order of the oldest to newest windows OS, with linux or other on last. SUSE lilo works nice with XP. Ensure you left linux some unpartitioned space. - long live linux.