Partition of (2) 120GB SATA Drives for Win XP

[Guest]

Being advised that partitioning the drives to contain a clean install of
Windows XP Pro, for faster system boot time, and all around stability; any
tips to a smooth transition?

How many partitions per disk?
How big should each partition be?
Windows XP Pro needs roughly how much space, 30GB?

Ive printed a few "How-to's" from the tech net: 255867, 307848, & 313348.

Currently I have an existing drive that contains everything with no
partitions. These are two brand new drives, replacing the existing drive. I
am not worried of losing any information, as my old drive will be left
untouched.

 

[Paul Bobrowski]

Being advised that partitioning the drives to contain a clean install of
Windows XP Pro, for faster system boot time, and all around stability; any
tips to a smooth transition?

How many partitions per disk?
How big should each partition be?
Windows XP Pro needs roughly how much space, 30GB?

Ive printed a few "How-to's" from the tech net: 255867, 307848, & 313348.

Currently I have an existing drive that contains everything with no
partitions. These are two brand new drives, replacing the existing drive. I
am not worried of losing any information, as my old drive will be left
untouched.

It really depends on how you want to organize your data. I personally go
with a 3 partition approach that work pretty well for me.

I have a 80GB drive and a 160GB drive. The 80GB is split into two
partitions. The first partition is 10GB and contains only Windows XP plus
whatever things some programs flat out refuse the install anywhere else.
The remainder of the drive is a single partition where I install all
software, apps, games, etc. My 160GB drive is a single partition which I
simply use for storage (photos, mp3s, etc), I also have my Documents and
Settings folder remapped to this drive.

With my setup Windows can go south, and I can easily reload with only having
to reinstall programs as all of the data I wish to keep is on another
partition.

I hope this information is of some help and to answer your question, Windows
XP with all of my various programs installed leaves 6GB free on my system
drive. This was with a fresh SP2 slipstream install.