|HELP| Setting up partition for WinXP install. Clueless.

[i3lueHorneT]

Okay, just got over a HDD failure on a RIAD0 setup, one drive dead, other fine. Now I figure, since I learned long after I got my machine about them, I may as well setup a partition on the single drive for the OS alone. As I understand it giving WinXP its own partition on the drive will allow for a simple reinstall of the OS should need be, simple as in I won't lose any data on the rest of the drive correct? As the alternative would force the loss of everything written to the drive during the reinstall process, something to do with registry and MFT I imagine, so sitting the OS alone on its own 'make pretend' HDD would just frag that allocation leaving the goods alone no? I have a few questions regarding this process:

1. All that crap I have above is correct right?
2. Out of curiosity do we know if there's any additive performance gain, like WinXP loading faster or similar?
3. During the process of figuring out the HDD failure I ran into a few places claiming to create partitions, the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools, WinXP's install, and 3rd party software like Partition Magic. Which should I go about using and how?
4. How can I go about cleaning/nuking the drive of its previous contents, it was setup on a stripped RAID with its twin but that doesn't mean there's still software that can read some its contents right? So what are my options for clearing the drive, I don't need to do some DoD standards wipe (there was nothing really sensitive on it anyway) but am at least curious to what some of my choices for the process are and at what stage in the process I can and should do them?
5. Settings, size considerations (how many GBs should I set for the OS/FAT or NTFS etc) and whatever else I should know about the process and the aftermath would be appreciated. As in basically I'll be creating a second phantom storage drive that the OS will recognize and I'll be able to use as a second physical drive right?
/Thanks ever so much.


peace,

 

[jayjaya29]

Seems you want to create a partition just for WinXP and have the rest of the drive (2nd partition) for programs, and media.

You can create the partitions and format your drive with the WinXP CD. Put it in and boot up from it. From there choose to install a new copy of WinXP and follow the process. You will first create the partitions then it will format the drive and then it will install WinXP.

Just make sure to make the partition for WinXP at least 5 to 6 gis. I made mine too small once and programs that you cannot choose the path to install clogged up the partition and it became a mess. So make the partition large enough to have some extra room just in case.

Having XP by itself in its own partition won't really make things go any faster, its all coming from the same drive. Just be sure to defragment the partition often as it fragments easily.

Make both partitions NTFS, no reason for FAT with WinXP in my opinion.

Good luck.

 

[i3lueHorneT]

Thanks for all the info.

I went with using the WinXP install disk to create a 5gb partition after using the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools to wipe the diska few times.
/Thanks again.


peace,

 

[djnes]

You're going to want to get something like PartitionMagic and resize that partition. 5GB isn't even close to enough space, if you plan on installing any software or games. You can search if you want, because it been asked a lot, but there's no reason to NOT have your apps and games installed on the C drive.