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

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: udExBHZQGHA.6008@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl... | 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. | |