dual booting leopard

[Andi]

Hi there,

I'm new to the mac. While waiting for Leopard support, I'd like to install Leopard several times, and be able to select which system to use on startup. I already got Bootcamp & XP installed, so I'd like to have a screen that lets me select between: OSX (general) / OSX (PT) / XP
I always did this with XP on the PC to have a dedicated PT-System, I guess it'd be useful on the Mac too, to prevent future compatibility issues.
Can this be done safely and easily with OSX? Just by installing Leopard a second time, maybe?
I didn't want to risk deleting my existing install, so I haven't tried that yet...

- Andi

[Slim Shady]

You would need another empty drive/partition first, but then once installed all you need to do is hold down 'option' while booting and it will show you your available startup disks.

[Andi]

Thanks, I'll split up my existing Mac OS partition and give it a try, then.
Hope this won't affect the ability to boot from the XP partition.

I wonder how widespread using several installs of the same OS is on the Mac, I know a lot of people did this with XP on the PC, but I haven't seen anyone mention it with OS X.

- Andi

[Slim Shady]

It's extremely common. I've read a lot of posts from users who put Leopard on an external drive in order to 'check it out' and kept a Tiger install intact in order to have ProTools compatibility. I happen to be one of those users, however I didn't care much for Leopard so I don't really boot up off that drive anymore and just stick with my Tiger partition, but my point is it's very common and very easy to do with Macs.