XP and drivers- what should stay on the C drive?

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I am attempting to create a better HD by partitianing some volumes (using Partition Magic 8). I have a 120gig HD with a 110gig C and a 10gig D. I was told to make a 10 gig C, put only the OS on that, and partition the rest as I please. I'm wondering what EXACTLY must remain with the OS on the C. I have quite a few programs/updates/drivers I'm hoping I don't have to reinstall. Additionaly, its a Fujitsu FMV Deskpower system (Japan), and the recovery disks appear to install some of the drivers and XP Home automaticaly before it prompts me for the application disks (which appear to contain some necessary drivers as well as 'junk' programs-although the application disks do give me a choice of what to install) . I then have to install my English XP Pro over the old installation. I'm then left with quite a bit of stuff to sort through. I tried to reformat/reinstall everything again, selecting only necessay stuff, but ended up having to reinstall a bunch of drivers, and I'm still not 100% sure if it's OK. Keep in mind that all the manuals/software/recovery disks are in Japanese, and I'm working with a slightly unwilling (and computer phobic) translator ;-).
Any suggestions
(I guess my main concern is having everything run rather optimaly and not running out of room on the C: drive)
 
jonnyd said:
I am attempting to create a better HD by partitianing some volumes (using
Click to expand...
Partition Magic 8). I have a 120gig HD with a 110gig C and a 10gig D. I
was told to make a 10 gig C, put only the OS on that, and partition the rest
as I please. I'm wondering what EXACTLY must remain with the OS on the C.
I have quite a few programs/updates/drivers I'm hoping I don't have to
reinstall. Additionaly, its a Fujitsu FMV Deskpower system (Japan), and the
recovery disks appear to install some of the drivers and XP Home
automaticaly before it prompts me for the application disks (which appear to
contain some necessary drivers as well as 'junk' programs-although the
application disks do give me a choice of what to install) . I then have to
install my English XP Pro over the old installation. I'm then left with
quite a bit of stuff to sort through. I tried to reformat/reinstall
everything again, selecting only necessay stuff, but ended up having to
reinstall a bunch of drivers, and I'm still not 100% sure if it's OK. Keep
in mind that all the manuals/software/recovery disks are in Japanese, and
I'm working with a slightly unwilling (and computer phobic) translator ;-).
Any suggestions?
(I guess my main concern is having everything run rather optimaly and not
Click to expand...
running out of room on the C: drive)

FWIW, I'll tell you how I have my PCs configured. I have a 10GB C drive with
XP Pro installed plus my applications. I am somewhere under 5GB and figure I
have all the large apps I'll need installed but that's my situation. I have
another logical drive around 10GB that I installed the only games I have,
MS-Flight Simulator and MS-Train. These both take a fair bit of space. One
reason I wanted them installed on a different logical drive is that I do C
backups via Drive Image and there is no need to keep including them in every
image I make.

I keep my data files (documents, drawings, photos, spreadsheets, programs I
download, application patches etc) on a simple file server. If I didn't use
the server approach, I would have another logical or physical drive to store
these files. This is to keep them isolated from my OS and applications.
These data files are the ones you have to be careful with since you can't
buy them if you lose them and they should be carefully backed up. With this
approach if you lose you C drive for any reason it doesn't screw up your
data files - you can blow it away and not worry about what is mixed in with
the OS and apps.

The remainder of my HD has a large logical drive that I store my Drive Image
backups on. Every 3rd backup or so I copy the image to CDR so if I lose the
entire drive I can restore my C drive. Remember: the data files on the other
partition would also be backed up so you don't lose them as well. (In
reality, BackupMyPC runs everynight on my file server and writes the day's
new and modified files to CDR.)

This isn't the only approach but it works for me.
Billh
 
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