XP Partition Size
 

I want to partition my drive so that the operating system is separate from the data files. How much space should I allocate to my WinXP Partition?

depends on how big your program files will be and if your pagefile will also be on sys partition, how big will that be, will you have sys restore on/off and lastly, will you allow hibernation.

when I used to have 30 gigs allocated to WinXP I had 20 for data and 10 for OS and programs. That was a bit generous ;) Like the above poster said though, there are a lot of cators involved.

I've got a few partitions for XP Pro:

System: OS and progs
Data: Documents and Settings
Swap: pagefile

I think the System volume is about 10 GB. The size of your drive will determine how big you want to give it.

Swap is 4 GB but can be much less since most swap files are well under 2 GB.

It's a hassle moving the entire Documents and Settings from C: to elsewhere, but it's possible. Microsoft has a few ways, check out support.microsoft.com. Of course, you can simply leave Doc&Set on C: and create your own folders. You won't get everything in a backup because XP puts many of your files (ie: Outlook data, dictionaries, etc.) in the Doc&Set folders.

I also have a question about this.
If program files need to be on the same partition with the OS, does that mean all PC game installations are going to be with the OS partition? I get a little confused by what some of you mean by "program files".

I was thinking about having 10 gigs for the Windows XP partition, but I'll probably move it up to 15 gigs. (out of an 80gig hard drive)

'Program Files' is the dir where your proggies are installed.
like, when you install Office or Photoshop or whatever else, is where it goes by default.

and, i've never installed games, but i suppose you could install them there too, not sure where their default install is.

10 gig for the winxp partition is enough if you install all games and non-system progs on other drives.

I had a 5 gig partition for XP Pro, only thing I installed here was Office. Everything else went on other drives, except for the stuff that wouldn't let me change the destination. For the most part this worked well, just recently had to increase this to 10 gig. Soon I will format and reinstall everything with no partitions.

I just got a 120GB drive and allocated 30GB for XP. Kind of overkill but I figure better safe than sorry. I have 160 total GB so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

i've got 9 gig C: and it's just fine, all things are installed here, and i've still got some free space for whatever, and a proper size pagefile.

no sysrestore or hibernate, altho i mite try the hibernation thing sometime..

I'd give it 20GB if you're going to install programs on the same partition. If you're not, then give it 10 GB, heavens knows what some software puts on the system volume.

Ive got 4Gig for xp pro 2Gig swap 10Gig program files 5Gig downloads 40Gig for all my files. I like to keep them small ang backup to cd with ghost

I agree with bannet. If you're ONLY going to install the OS on that partition, 4 gigs should be enough for XP Pro. It was for me, anyways.