Format and Reinstall Win XP Quandary

[drybones]

Have Computer that came with Win XP Media OEM installed.Do not care for
the Media XP as it interferes with two older games these old tired drybones
likes to play. <grin>

Do Have a Win Me disk and a Win XP Upgrade disk from years back.

Two (2) SATA Hard Drives in this machine.

Questioning as to placing Windows XP with SP2 within the 160 GB HD #1
with maybe 25 GB space and setting up a separate large partition with
folders to place the computer games individually into, away from Win XP.
Seems a Huge waste of HD space to run Win XP SP 2 alone or even with
some 80 GB of games.

Also there is the option of setting up a partition for each individual
game outside the primary Windows XP partition any thoughts along
this line(?)

Wanting to achieve the best possible environment for the WinXP working
condition. I am also considering moving the Paging File to the first
partition
on the second SATA drive will be only used at this writing for Norton Ghost
backups. This ought to improve Win XP's ability to work faster.

Lots of questions and I do appreciate your advice with each possible
setup of my 're-install' of Win XP and partitioning of the 160 GB hard
drive.

I thank you for reading this message and hope for positive responses.
drybones

 

[Rich Barry]

Drybones, since you have a lot of storage space, using a separate
partition just for WinXP SP2 seems like a good idea.
Having your games on a different partition and your Paging File on a
different drive makes sense also. One more thing
that I would do is set aside a partition large enough to contain an
image of your WinXP once it's set up completely with
all your programs, updates and games added. Probably ten gigs would be
enough. I use Knoppix Live CD. It's Linux
but all you will be interested in is the dd command. This is how I would
set it up. Others I am sure would have a different scenario.

 

[drybones]

Thanks for your input Rich Barry.

Would have liked to seen more~but.
drybones