Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I am the tech editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickling. Hey,
Speaker 1: there is today. Actually, what are we going to talk about? Well,
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about something that comes to us
Speaker 1: courtesy of a little listener mail. This listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Jeff and Jeff says, Hey, Chris and Jonathan or
Speaker 1: the unfortunate intern who must sift through listener mail first.
Speaker 1: Uh no, Jeff, that's us. I am absolutely in love
Speaker 1: with the podcast. I just finished listening to your show
Speaker 1: on Hackintosh's and the unfortunate comment at the end of
Speaker 1: the show about sticking with a PC if you want
Speaker 1: to do the useful things. I love my Mac, but
Speaker 1: I do have to agree I miss gaming too, which
Speaker 1: is why I used Apple's boot camp to install Windows
Speaker 1: XP on my Mac, resulting in a to the dual
Speaker 1: boot system. A delusion. Questions is about to begin. How
Speaker 1: the heck does it work. Boot Camp is provided by
Speaker 1: Apple as if they're encouraging people to also install Windows
Speaker 1: on their max. Of course, you still have to purchase
Speaker 1: your own copy of Windows. Is that a violation of
Speaker 1: the you love for either Apple or Microsoft? How or
Speaker 1: why did Apple make their machines compatible with both operating systems?
Speaker 1: And then how do other programs like Parallels, which allow
Speaker 1: you to operate Windows while running your Mac work? Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work. Jeff ps. A show on green
Speaker 1: technology would be awesome too. I would not complain about that.
Speaker 1: We're not doing a show on green technology. No. Today,
Speaker 1: we're doing a show about multibooting. Yes, because your computer
Speaker 1: will depending on your computer, but we'll get in a second.
Speaker 1: Your Peter may or may not be able to run
Speaker 1: multiple operating systems, not just you know, for example, Windows
Speaker 1: and Mac. As you said, right, yeah, we when we're
Speaker 1: talking about multibooting, it's uh, it's it's a wider net
Speaker 1: than that. We're talking about things like a Lenox, Unix
Speaker 1: things like that, not necessarily all of them at the
Speaker 1: same time. Some of them work together and some of
Speaker 1: them don't. Um And when we say work together, we'll
Speaker 1: have to get into that a little bit. Too. It's
Speaker 1: kind of, um, it's kind of an unusual situation. So
Speaker 1: when you turn your computer on, right, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: about like when you flip the power switch, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about when you buy it chocolates and say nice
Speaker 1: things to it. Uh, there's a certain process that the
Speaker 1: computer goes through in order to boot up. Now, this
Speaker 1: process starts with the master boot record, Yes, which is
Speaker 1: a sector at the very very beginning of the hard drive. Right,
Speaker 1: so your your computer's hard drive, whatever format that might
Speaker 1: be in. It could be a platter hard drive or
Speaker 1: it could be so its state, but either way, within
Speaker 1: that first sector, there's something called the master boot record.
Speaker 1: Now this is this is the the little bit of
Speaker 1: code that tells the essentially your computer where to go next,
Speaker 1: like how how how to boot up the operating system.
Speaker 1: So the uh, what I'll do is it'll it'll reference
Speaker 1: a partition table and look for the active boot partition.
Speaker 1: This is what then says, okay, well you know, if
Speaker 1: we've passed go, here's the next square that we have
Speaker 1: to move to. So it passes the control to the
Speaker 1: partition boot record that continues the booting process. Now, the
Speaker 1: partition boot record then looks for a system specific boot
Speaker 1: files that are associated with that particular operating system. Right,
Speaker 1: So the like a Windows that would start looking for
Speaker 1: the I and I files. Um. At that point, it
Speaker 1: then finishes the whole process of boot it ing, and
Speaker 1: it loads up the operating system for your computer. Now,
Speaker 1: if you only have one operating system on your computer,
Speaker 1: this is a very straightforward process. It's just a straight shot, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So NBR for the master boot record, NBR to the PBR,
Speaker 1: which is not perhaps blue ribbon that several people listening
Speaker 1: just thought that, Yeah, I know, um, but no, the
Speaker 1: that's the the partition boot record, and then that goes
Speaker 1: to the system files. So uh, pretty pretty straightforward. However,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about computers, or one interesting thing about computers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's more than one. One of the
Speaker 1: interesting things that you can learn about computers is that
Speaker 1: you can install multiple operating systems on a computer if
Speaker 1: you partition the hard drive correctly. That's true. Well, there
Speaker 1: is an alternative. You could have multiple hard drives, each
Speaker 1: with its own operating system. That's a little bit more
Speaker 1: I should point out to Ouh. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: detail that could go into a multiple boot system. So
Speaker 1: we're not We're probably gonna take just a really high
Speaker 1: end look at it, because we're talking about the the
Speaker 1: basics here to see behind. As it turns out, depending
Speaker 1: upon which operating systems you want to install, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different things you have to take into consideration.
Speaker 1: For example, some versions of Windows can recognize when other
Speaker 1: operating systems are installed on your computer, whether or not
Speaker 1: that is the whether or not that that version of
Speaker 1: Windows is your primary operating system. Some of them object
Speaker 1: to not being the primary operating system, and if it's
Speaker 1: not the primary, you're gonna have more headaches. You're gonna
Speaker 1: there are ways of working around it, but you have
Speaker 1: to find out what those ways are. Um, it's so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can get really really complex, so we're gonna try
Speaker 1: and keep it more general. In most cases, you can
Speaker 1: find tools out there that make this fairly easy, or
Speaker 1: at least easier than if you were to set out
Speaker 1: and do it on your own. Yep, there's a so,
Speaker 1: so it is possible. Getting back to what you were
Speaker 1: saying before, Jonathan about um, you know they're being partitions
Speaker 1: on a drive. You could have multiple drives with multiple
Speaker 1: operating systems. But let's say you're you know, the average
Speaker 1: person who is interested in a dual boot system, or
Speaker 1: you know, in the case of our dear listener, someone
Speaker 1: who has, uh, you know, the opportunity to install multiple
Speaker 1: operating systems on one single hard disk. And in that case, yes,
Speaker 1: you do want to partition your hard drive. And a
Speaker 1: partition is pretty much exactly like what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's it's a different part of your hard drive. Um.
Speaker 1: And when you partition you're hard drive, you're basically telling, uh,
Speaker 1: your computer, look, this part of the hard drive is
Speaker 1: like its own hard drive. Your It's not literally a
Speaker 1: different hard drive, but your computer treats it as though
Speaker 1: it were a different hard drive. Right. So, if if
Speaker 1: you want to think of it in physical terms, although
Speaker 1: I should hasten to add that the physical representation is
Speaker 1: is it's just an example. Um. The physical nature of
Speaker 1: hard drives is also a very complicated thing. As it
Speaker 1: turns out. You talk about cylinders and platters, and then
Speaker 1: there's solid state drives, which are a different animal altogether,
Speaker 1: and by animal, I mean hard drive. Don't write meat people, um.
Speaker 1: But if you want to think of it in physical terms,
Speaker 1: think of a room and you've got a pretty big room. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's roomy in fact, and there's a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a nice square room. And then you think, you
Speaker 1: know what, I want to set this one corner of
Speaker 1: the room off to be a room where I store
Speaker 1: all my stuff. It's gonna be essentially a closet. So
Speaker 1: you build a couple of walls, um, and you you
Speaker 1: you partition off that room. There's still a door into
Speaker 1: the big room, so you can get back and forth,
Speaker 1: but it's set aside. And then you think, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, I've got that place to store my stuff.
Speaker 1: But I really want I want I want a special
Speaker 1: corner here so I can watch movies and play video
Speaker 1: games and stuff. So I'm gonna build another wall and uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to corner off this section here from
Speaker 1: the main part of the room. Well, that's essentially what
Speaker 1: you're doing. When you're partitioning off a hard drive. You
Speaker 1: are taking up the whole and you're dividing it up
Speaker 1: into parts. Um. These parts, of course have to be
Speaker 1: smaller than the whole. We can't magically make our hard
Speaker 1: drives larger than what they were before. Uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: this caused some issues back when hard drives started to
Speaker 1: bump up against the eight gigabyte range, because before that
Speaker 1: there was a physical limit based upon the hard drive
Speaker 1: architecture that a gigabytes. That was that was as high
Speaker 1: as you were gonna go. And we got around that,
Speaker 1: but almost like by tricking the computer um at any rate,
Speaker 1: So you can partition off your hard drive that way.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to install more than one operating system
Speaker 1: on your computer, you would need to have a partition,
Speaker 1: at least a partition per operating system. So if you
Speaker 1: had to operating systems, you would need at the very
Speaker 1: least you partitions. You may want to do more than that.
Speaker 1: You may want both operating systems to have access to
Speaker 1: the same data. For example, let's say that you have
Speaker 1: two different versions of Windows that you want to run
Speaker 1: and and there may be reasons why you would need
Speaker 1: to do this, and we'll get into that in a
Speaker 1: little bit, but if you had these two different versions
Speaker 1: of Windows, but you want to be able to access
Speaker 1: the same general data, you would need a third partition
Speaker 1: that would hold all the data, and both of your
Speaker 1: operating systems would have to be able to access that partition.
Speaker 1: While maintaining separation between the two operating system partitions and
Speaker 1: the flowers are still standing. Yes. Nice, that's a ghostbuster's reference. Um.
Speaker 1: It took me a second to put it together. But yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you've partitioned your hard drive. Would
Speaker 1: there are many tools out there that allow you to
Speaker 1: do this. By the way, before you partition anything, before
Speaker 1: you ever try this, back up your hard hard drive,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you it's it's um, it's a good idea. Actually.
Speaker 1: I read people who are you know, who are writing
Speaker 1: tutorials on how to create a multi boot system or
Speaker 1: to partition or hard drives, and one of the first
Speaker 1: things that they say, other than back up your hard drive,
Speaker 1: is maybe you don't necessarily want to do this with
Speaker 1: your main computer. Yeah. Yeah, I would avoid doing this
Speaker 1: with your main computer. If you have a secondary computer,
Speaker 1: that would be all right for you to play with.
Speaker 1: But um, there are problems that can come up from
Speaker 1: partitioning your hard drive if things, especially depending on the
Speaker 1: the combination of operating systems you've chosen. Um, and don't
Speaker 1: just do it willy nilly. I mean, if you're willing
Speaker 1: to accept the risk, you know, go right ahead. But
Speaker 1: just keep in mind that there is a possibility that
Speaker 1: you could, um, you could erase a lot of information
Speaker 1: right that term paper that you have do on Friday,
Speaker 1: that you just got your second draft done and oh
Speaker 1: don it now it's gone. Yeah. Um. And keep in
Speaker 1: mind also that operating systems can have is uose with
Speaker 1: different parts of your hardware. Um. Things that work fine
Speaker 1: in one operating system may stop working in another because
Speaker 1: the drivers aren't there. That's true, you should um. Not
Speaker 1: all operating systems are are created equal. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, This answers one of one of the questions. UM,
Speaker 1: because we were talking about what enables a Mac to
Speaker 1: do this now when you couldn't do it before. Okay,
Speaker 1: so before um, when they were running these power PC chips, Uh,
Speaker 1: the operating system for Windows would just not run on it.
Speaker 1: So you were you had to make a choice if
Speaker 1: you wanted to buy a Mac, you ran the Mac os. UM. Well,
Speaker 1: when Apple decided to change course and switched over to
Speaker 1: Intel chips, Um, they are essentially the same chips that
Speaker 1: go inside a PC. Actually they are the same chips
Speaker 1: because they will run Windows. UM and uh. And yes,
Speaker 1: to answer the other question, Apple is okay with you
Speaker 1: UH using bootcamp to partition your hard drive and install
Speaker 1: a copy of Windows on there. And of fact, it's
Speaker 1: a selling point for them right right because before you
Speaker 1: know you you it was a macor a PC. Now
Speaker 1: you can do both, and that makes the Mac more
Speaker 1: valuable to some people because they can run programs from
Speaker 1: with operating Because what's interesting is you can't do it
Speaker 1: the other way around, or at least Apple doesn't want
Speaker 1: you to. You can do it, but in order for
Speaker 1: you to be able to run the mac os on
Speaker 1: a PC, you have to essentially fool the operating system
Speaker 1: into believing it is on a Mac. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: have to. UM, the Mac is going to have to
Speaker 1: recognize the components inside the machine, and if it looks
Speaker 1: like it isn't Mac, it's not going to want to
Speaker 1: run on it. Yeah. Now, again, you can fool the
Speaker 1: operating system using various kinds of software in order to
Speaker 1: UH to force it to run on a PC. But
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary as far as how reliable it goes.
Speaker 1: So getting back to to the whole multibooting concept here.
Speaker 1: Now we've partitioned our hard drive UM several times, we
Speaker 1: know that it's going to work on that computer. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's assume that we have already taken into account
Speaker 1: the different operating systems we're going to use. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and say we're running, um, two different versions of
Speaker 1: Windows and a version of Linux. So we have three
Speaker 1: different operating systems on this one machine. We've got let's
Speaker 1: say five partitions total. All right, So each partition for
Speaker 1: the operating system you've you've created it so it's just
Speaker 1: big enough to hold that operating system, all right, So
Speaker 1: that means that but you could do it, But you
Speaker 1: could do you could do it where each each one
Speaker 1: is maybe give it a little room, but more or less,
Speaker 1: what you've got is a partition that's large enough to
Speaker 1: hold each operating system. And then you've dedicated the rest
Speaker 1: of your space for storage right in your in your
Speaker 1: two different drives that you're using for storage. Now, um,
Speaker 1: when you boot up the computer, depending on how you
Speaker 1: set up the master boot record, because this this different
Speaker 1: vendors do different methods. Actually Microsoft is very different from
Speaker 1: everyone else. But if you were to uh, for the
Speaker 1: most part, what happens is when you boot up, the
Speaker 1: first step is the same. The master boot record looks
Speaker 1: at the partition table, only this time there are choices.
Speaker 1: It is no longer, oh, I need to hand over
Speaker 1: the booting power to this very particular uh PBR again
Speaker 1: not perhaps blue ribbon, the partition boot record. I can't
Speaker 1: just do that because there are multiple choices. And then
Speaker 1: what will happen is you'll be presented with the choice
Speaker 1: of which operating system you wish to boot into, right,
Speaker 1: and so you choose that one, and then the rest
Speaker 1: of the process pretty much is the same. So the
Speaker 1: the NBR will hand over the booting to the PBR,
Speaker 1: which then moves forward from there and and accesses the
Speaker 1: appropriate system specific boot files in order to to start
Speaker 1: up the operating system. So with Linux, it's going to
Speaker 1: be one set. With whatever version of Windows you're running,
Speaker 1: it's going to be another set. And then of course
Speaker 1: your your second version of Windows will use yet a
Speaker 1: third set, so um you could choose any of those three.
Speaker 1: You have to remember that this is divvying up your
Speaker 1: computer's resources, so your computer is not gonna have nearly
Speaker 1: the amount of storage space that used to have. UM
Speaker 1: it can also depending on the operating systems you've chosen,
Speaker 1: it can affect performance in other ways. Um, it could
Speaker 1: make your computer run a little more slowly. Uh. Depending
Speaker 1: on how you've partitioned the drives, it may have more
Speaker 1: trouble accessing the hard drive in order to find the
Speaker 1: right information it needs to operate. Um. It's a tricky thing,
Speaker 1: which is again another reason why it's a good idea
Speaker 1: to use this on a secondary or or you know,
Speaker 1: even a tertiary machine or whatever. You know, some spare
Speaker 1: machine you have as opposed to your primary one, just
Speaker 1: because if stuff goes wrong, then you haven't lost all.
Speaker 1: You haven't lost your your primary machine. Yeah, if you're already,
Speaker 1: If you're partitioning machine, that's I'm sorry. If you're partitioning
Speaker 1: a hard drive on a machine that has uh um
Speaker 1: been formatted. Say you have a a Windows XP machine
Speaker 1: with a five gigabyte hard drive, and you've had this
Speaker 1: machine for two years now, and you say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to try Linux. I want to install Linux
Speaker 1: on here. I want to partition my hard drive. Well, UM,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to sort of be very careful because
Speaker 1: the information on there. You know, of course, you probably
Speaker 1: know about defragmentation, how data can get stored in different
Speaker 1: sectors on a hard drive, all over the hard drive.
Speaker 1: But what a partition is gonna want to do the
Speaker 1: partitioning tool, it's gonna want to create a part of
Speaker 1: the hard drive that doesn't have any information on it.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you have to try to judge
Speaker 1: how much room you want to save on the Windows partition, like, well,
Speaker 1: how much am I gonna how much space am I
Speaker 1: gonna need on there? How much? You know, am I
Speaker 1: going to run the risk? And it warns you if
Speaker 1: when I installed UM it won't two on our test
Speaker 1: machine here in the office. It warned you. It says,
Speaker 1: you know, look, there is a possibility that some of
Speaker 1: your files could be damaged in this process because it's
Speaker 1: already formed at it And are you sure you really
Speaker 1: want to do this? And I'm sure it's just a precaution,
Speaker 1: but so you know, just be aware that formatting a
Speaker 1: hard you know, that's why we were sort of talking
Speaker 1: about the idea of starting from scratch, you know, brand
Speaker 1: new hard drive. Let's go ahead and throw three different
Speaker 1: operating systems on there. You know, if you're doing this
Speaker 1: with a hard drive with an operating system that's been
Speaker 1: on there for a while, you know that information is
Speaker 1: going to be spread out a little bit, you might
Speaker 1: want to run a defragment or on it and clean
Speaker 1: up to drive a good bit before you partitioning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't, if you don't mind the idea of
Speaker 1: totally wiping your computer and starting from scratch, then that
Speaker 1: that solves a lot of problems. But as we as
Speaker 1: we mentioned Chris, that was a really good point because,
Speaker 1: like I said before, with the physical representation that room,
Speaker 1: where you you easily block off a corner here, in
Speaker 1: a corner there, that's not the way it really works
Speaker 1: on a computer. On a computer, you could think of
Speaker 1: it as a high rise building with lots and lots
Speaker 1: of different rooms, and certain rooms have their lights on,
Speaker 1: and other rooms have the lights off, and the rooms
Speaker 1: that the lights off, those are those are free. You
Speaker 1: can use those too put in more information. But they're
Speaker 1: scattered all across the building in different levels, and and
Speaker 1: some levels have almost all the lights off, and some
Speaker 1: levels have almost all the lights on, and others are
Speaker 1: are kind of a jumble. Um. That's why it's kind
Speaker 1: of that this can get really complicated because to partition off,
Speaker 1: say all right, well, I need a block of sixty
Speaker 1: rooms that have no lights on. Uh, there may not
Speaker 1: be an adjacent block of sixty and may be spread across.
Speaker 1: So again we're talking about a difference between the physical
Speaker 1: structure of the hard drive and what the actual digital
Speaker 1: representation is. Which is why the more I read about this,
Speaker 1: the more my head hurts, because I was an English major. Well, thankfully,
Speaker 1: most of the utilities now for the most modern operating
Speaker 1: systems that will help you with this. You know, things
Speaker 1: like g parted, which is a a free, open source
Speaker 1: UM utility UM and of course boot camp for the Mac.
Speaker 1: They'll help you through it. They'll walk you through it.
Speaker 1: If you're installing UM, I know most flavors of Linux
Speaker 1: have you know, when you're installing the computer it it
Speaker 1: helps you walk you through the process of doing this.
Speaker 1: Do you really want to partition your hard drive? You
Speaker 1: can that way you can install you know this along
Speaker 1: with your normal operating system or would you prefer just
Speaker 1: to wipe the whole thing clean? Um? So, thankfully it
Speaker 1: you know that you get some help, but UM I
Speaker 1: recommend to if you're if you're doing this as a
Speaker 1: hobby and you're especially if you're really concerned about the
Speaker 1: possibility that you're going to do damage to the data
Speaker 1: on your hard drive by doing this. I recommend doing
Speaker 1: a little research on the internet first before you do
Speaker 1: this with some reputable sources because UM, it really differs
Speaker 1: operating an operating system and version of operating system to
Speaker 1: version of operating system. UM, there are some details that
Speaker 1: you might want to pick up on, and we don't.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot. I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that everybody knows that this is you know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not really hard to do, but you want to
Speaker 1: be careful when you're doing it right. Each each pairing
Speaker 1: has its own set of circumstances. So that's why we
Speaker 1: don't really go into detail because to do to say,
Speaker 1: like you want to run Windows and Windows Vista on
Speaker 1: the same machine is going to be totally different. And
Speaker 1: if you want to run run Windows XP and Lennox
Speaker 1: on the same machine, it's just it's it's come you know,
Speaker 1: there are different set of parameters that you have to
Speaker 1: take into accounts. So but they're fortunately, like Chris said,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of resources out there that pretty
Speaker 1: much cover every single variation you can think of. And
Speaker 1: UM and and if it's not covered. You can probably
Speaker 1: find a forum somewhere where you ask a question and
Speaker 1: people will be quick to answer you. So it might
Speaker 1: even get you involved a little bit more in the
Speaker 1: community and you'll, uh, you know, maybe you can become
Speaker 1: more of a contributor and hobbyists. Um. And I was
Speaker 1: going to add to talking about the complexity of it.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I didn't really want to get
Speaker 1: into the multidisc a physical hard disc setup is because
Speaker 1: it involves wiring. You have to, uh, you know, tell
Speaker 1: each hard drive whether you know you have to pick
Speaker 1: a master hard drive and then indicate which ones are
Speaker 1: slave hard drives. Um. And it's you know, you're better
Speaker 1: off going through the instructions and actually consulting uh some
Speaker 1: experts before you get started with that, because it's it's
Speaker 1: it's more detail than what a podcast can go into,
Speaker 1: really yea. Um, but I was also gonna meant we
Speaker 1: were going to talk about why people might want to
Speaker 1: partition their hard drives and make a multi boot system. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, before we even get into multi boot,
Speaker 1: you may want to partition your hard drive. I mean,
Speaker 1: one reason you might think about doing it is just
Speaker 1: for an organizational standpoint. So you may only have one
Speaker 1: operating system, but you might want to partition your hard
Speaker 1: drive into multiple UH drives so that you can store
Speaker 1: certain information in one drive and other information and another drive. UM.
Speaker 1: This can depending on how you organize, it can actually
Speaker 1: speed up things like retrieving information. If you're using a
Speaker 1: like a video processing program, and you you've put all
Speaker 1: of your video stuff into one drive, then eventually the
Speaker 1: operating system it knows it's just gonna go to this
Speaker 1: one drive, which is much smaller than the overall hard
Speaker 1: drive space, doesn't take it as long to search up
Speaker 1: particular information and pull it back for you, so it
Speaker 1: can in certain cases be faster to partition your hard
Speaker 1: drive and retrieve information that way. UM. Or you know,
Speaker 1: just from an organizational standpoint, if like you wanted to
Speaker 1: have a drive just for all your games and then
Speaker 1: everything like all your other data was going to be
Speaker 1: on another drive. UM this also helps if you ever
Speaker 1: have a if there's ever like a corrupt disc or something.
Speaker 1: If something happens that that corrupts one of your drives,
Speaker 1: your other drives might be safe. And if you keep
Speaker 1: backing up your drives, which you should be doing, then
Speaker 1: you can do a restore that hopefully won't affect your
Speaker 1: entire computer. It just affect one drive, which still is
Speaker 1: pretty traumatic, but it's not as bad as the entire
Speaker 1: computer having to be restored. Yes. Now, for as for
Speaker 1: multi operating systems, why would you want to do this? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we have one example, yes, um, and uh
Speaker 1: you know there are other reasons too. For example, in
Speaker 1: our office we have the test machine, which you have
Speaker 1: heard about very frequently. We were trying both Windows seven,
Speaker 1: the beta version of that before it went before it
Speaker 1: became stopped working. It still works for two hours at
Speaker 1: a time and shuts down without telling you. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: since we haven't yeh Um, we'll get around to that eventually,
Speaker 1: and uh one to UM. And it gives us an
Speaker 1: opportunity to try both operating systems out on the same
Speaker 1: machine without having to uh you know, we don't stall
Speaker 1: an additional drive. And it give us a chance to
Speaker 1: actually try out partitioning a hard drive. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a hobbyist, you can you can
Speaker 1: certainly do that and uh you know, well, the way
Speaker 1: I figured also is that if you are let's say
Speaker 1: you're developing UM software, it might be it might be
Speaker 1: good to be able to do this so that you
Speaker 1: can make sure you develop software that works on different
Speaker 1: operating systems or different versions of the same operating system,
Speaker 1: because you may want to even do this with the
Speaker 1: IS like the mac os. You may want the different
Speaker 1: versions of the macOS on one machine so that you
Speaker 1: can make sure that things that run in in Leopard
Speaker 1: run in snow Leopard UM without having to purchase a
Speaker 1: machine per operating system, which gets pretty expensive. UM. And
Speaker 1: things like legacy programs. We've talked about legacy programs before.
Speaker 1: These are the old programs that that people and corporations
Speaker 1: depend upon that are no longer supported by newer versions
Speaker 1: of the OS. They just you know, either the developers
Speaker 1: who originally created the software moved on to bigger and
Speaker 1: better things, or it's just abandoned ware or whatever, but
Speaker 1: there's no way of running that software in the modern
Speaker 1: operating systems. You may want to have a machine running
Speaker 1: the old system UM so that you can run legacy programs,
Speaker 1: but a lot of companies don't want to, you know,
Speaker 1: waste a machine just to do that. I mean, if
Speaker 1: that's all it does, then that's kind of a waste.
Speaker 1: Of space and energy and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But if you are able to to dual boot it
Speaker 1: so that you can run it in, you know, the
Speaker 1: operating system that the rest of the office is running
Speaker 1: in for most of the time, and then switch over
Speaker 1: whenever you need to use the legacy program, then that
Speaker 1: might make sense. Now, one disadvantage to using a multi
Speaker 1: boot operating system is that if you want to use
Speaker 1: the other operating system, you have to restart and boot
Speaker 1: into the other operating system. So you're in operating system
Speaker 1: A operating system B operating system, see, you know, and
Speaker 1: not sharing the others, which is the advantage of a
Speaker 1: program like Parallels or vm ware or Sun's Virtual Box.
Speaker 1: These are creating virtual machines where you can switch back
Speaker 1: and forth. Basically, it's it's like you see a window.
Speaker 1: For for those of you haven't tried it, um, it's
Speaker 1: like you have a window open in your current native
Speaker 1: operating system, and inside that window is the other operating
Speaker 1: system that can run programs installed on it. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's you're not creating a partition, and well, it's sort
Speaker 1: of creating a virtual partition really when you think about it, right,
Speaker 1: but not a physical part not a physical partition. UM.
Speaker 1: And uh it's kind of cool because you can say,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually have virtual Box installed on my
Speaker 1: Mac at home and a run uh Windows seven for
Speaker 1: two hours at a time on it, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I can I can switch back and forth from the
Speaker 1: Mac to the PC, you know, in the same window.
Speaker 1: Now the problem is, UM, in this case, you're dividing
Speaker 1: up the resources very literally, because when you install a
Speaker 1: new operating system in this virtual machine and create a
Speaker 1: virtual machine to run that operating system, it asks you
Speaker 1: how much memory? And we're talking RAM here, not hard
Speaker 1: drive space. So I have let's say two gigabytes of
Speaker 1: memory on my machine. I have to decide, well, one
Speaker 1: operating system is gonna run let's say one gigabyte, Well,
Speaker 1: the other one's gonna run the other. And so it
Speaker 1: overall your performance is going to be a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's not exactly like an emulator, but
Speaker 1: it works sort of like that. And you know, because
Speaker 1: you are running the other operating system concurrently, it's dividing
Speaker 1: up the system resources between the two. So everything is
Speaker 1: kind of delayed. Yeah, So if you have a really
Speaker 1: lightning best machine, then that's not gonna matter as much
Speaker 1: to you. But if you are, yeah, it's still gonna
Speaker 1: be noticeable. But if you have a slow machine, then
Speaker 1: it could become painful. So there there are advantages to
Speaker 1: that if you have something very simple that only runs
Speaker 1: in the other operating system. You why I want to
Speaker 1: go that route, But um, if you really want, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do something like play games, you know, the
Speaker 1: high end windows, high frame rate games, you know, first
Speaker 1: person shooters especially that kind of stuff with a lot
Speaker 1: of action, you're not gonna want to try to do
Speaker 1: that through a virtual machine. You're gonna want to do
Speaker 1: you know, dual boot and flip over together exactly, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: that was a good discussion about a multibooting. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: we're running a little short on time. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go on into listener mail, but we will. We
Speaker 1: definitely read every single one of those messages, so we
Speaker 1: don't have an intern reading those, it's us. It comes
Speaker 1: straight to us. Um. Sometimes it actually takes a detour
Speaker 1: to our junk folder for some reason, even though they're
Speaker 1: all coming to the same address. But we do make
Speaker 1: sure we check those as well, so keep those messages
Speaker 1: coming in our addresses is tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can read all about various operating
Speaker 1: systems at how stuff works dot com and check out
Speaker 1: our blogs are blogs at are at blogs dot hou
Speaker 1: stuf works dot com. We've got lots of interesting things
Speaker 1: to say about all sorts of stuff there, and hopefully
Speaker 1: you guys found this to be a pretty interesting topic.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's kind of cool to think about being
Speaker 1: able to run various operating systems on a single machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's It's been kind of fun doing that on
Speaker 1: the test machine just to get a look at the
Speaker 1: other ones. So I like it because it lets me
Speaker 1: break twice as much stuff on one single device. Indeed. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed it, and we will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com, and
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