Partitioning Hard Drive

If Vista does come public, I intend on downloading it. My question is,
should I partition my hard drive and dual-boot XP Home SP2 and Vista? (I
would assume this would be a good idea.) My question is, how should I go
about partitioning my hard drive? I have never done a dual-boot before or
partitioned a hard drive. Right now, my primary hard drive is a Western
Digital 80GB IDE 2MB cache hard drive (Formatted to 74.52GB) whole drive is
one partition, using XP. I'm currently utilizing 14.1GB on this drive.
Then, I have a second hard drive. It's a Western Digital 120GB IDE 8MB
cache hard drive. (Formatted to 111.78GB) It is also one entire partition,
using it for storage of personal files like pictures, music, and so on. I'm
using close to 10GB in it.

If I were to go about partitioning my 80 gig hard drive, how large should I
make the partition for XP and how large should I make the partition for
Vista? Should I go 40 gigs each and split it exactly in half? Can I make
the partitions when I'm going to reinstall XP?

Note: I know from reading in this newsgroup that I should install XP before
installing Vista when doing a dual-boot. I also heard that I should put XP
in the first partition and Vista in the second.

Thanks.

My question is, should I partition my hard drive and dual-boot XP Home SP2
and Vista? (I would assume this would be a good idea.)

>Its definitely recommended and the correct way to install Windows Vista
>right now, I don't think Vista currently supports installing on a RAW disk,
>also installing on a logical partition keeps your existing data protected
>if something goes wrong, and I suspect you will be still using Windows XP,
>right?

My question is, how should I go about partitioning my hard drive?

>For partitioning, I used Partition Magic, thats all I know, maybe someone
>can make some additional suggestion on partitioning tools. You can also use
>Windows XP setup to create a partition in the unpartitioned space.

If I were to go about partitioning my 80 gig hard drive, how large should I
make the partition for XP and how large should I make the partition for
Vista?

>I notice since build 5112, the space requirements for Windows Vista keeps
>growing. The latest build 5308 uses a total 8GBs, so to be safe, I
>recommend you install Vista 5308 or the next CTP on nothing less than
>30GBs, the more the better, so your 40GBs sounds like a great way to go.

Can I make the partitions when I'm going to reinstall XP?

>Windows XP setup should allow you to create a partition in the
>unpartitioned space, so no problems there.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connect | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta


I you already know and mentioned, install the older version of Windows first
(in this case XP) then Windows Vista.
"Travis King" <> wrote in message
news:...
> If Vista does come public, I intend on downloading it. My question is,
> should I partition my hard drive and dual-boot XP Home SP2 and Vista? (I
> would assume this would be a good idea.) My question is, how should I go
> about partitioning my hard drive? I have never done a dual-boot before or
> partitioned a hard drive. Right now, my primary hard drive is a Western
> Digital 80GB IDE 2MB cache hard drive (Formatted to 74.52GB) whole drive
> is one partition, using XP. I'm currently utilizing 14.1GB on this drive.
> Then, I have a second hard drive. It's a Western Digital 120GB IDE 8MB
> cache hard drive. (Formatted to 111.78GB) It is also one entire
> partition, using it for storage of personal files like pictures, music,
> and so on. I'm using close to 10GB in it.
>
> If I were to go about partitioning my 80 gig hard drive, how large should
> I make the partition for XP and how large should I make the partition for
> Vista? Should I go 40 gigs each and split it exactly in half? Can I make
> the partitions when I'm going to reinstall XP?
>
> Note: I know from reading in this newsgroup that I should install XP
> before installing Vista when doing a dual-boot. I also heard that I
> should put XP in the first partition and Vista in the second.
>
> Thanks.
>

If you wish to repartition your disk without losing data, you have a choice
of Symantec's Partition Magic, Acronis's Disk Director Suite, V
Communication's Partition Expert, BootIt NG, and a few others. None of the
free partition managers can resize NTFS partitions, unfortunately. And of
course, Microsoft's partitioning software cannot resize partitions
dynamically at all. But yes, you can use XP's partitioning utility to
(re)create your partitions at installation time. However, in this case only
the system partition will be formatted. You will need to format the other(s)
from within Windows.
--
Pierre Szwarc
Paris, France
PGP key ID 0x75B5779B
------------------------------------------------
Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom !
------------------------------------------------

"Travis King" <> a écrit dans le message de news:
...
| If Vista does come public, I intend on downloading it. My question is,
| should I partition my hard drive and dual-boot XP Home SP2 and Vista? (I
| would assume this would be a good idea.) My question is, how should I go
| about partitioning my hard drive? I have never done a dual-boot before or
| partitioned a hard drive. Right now, my primary hard drive is a Western
| Digital 80GB IDE 2MB cache hard drive (Formatted to 74.52GB) whole drive
is
| one partition, using XP. I'm currently utilizing 14.1GB on this drive.
| Then, I have a second hard drive. It's a Western Digital 120GB IDE 8MB
| cache hard drive. (Formatted to 111.78GB) It is also one entire
partition,
| using it for storage of personal files like pictures, music, and so on.
I'm
| using close to 10GB in it.
|
| If I were to go about partitioning my 80 gig hard drive, how large should
I
| make the partition for XP and how large should I make the partition for
| Vista? Should I go 40 gigs each and split it exactly in half? Can I make
| the partitions when I'm going to reinstall XP?
|
| Note: I know from reading in this newsgroup that I should install XP
before
| installing Vista when doing a dual-boot. I also heard that I should put
XP
| in the first partition and Vista in the second.
|
| Thanks.
|
|