Recommend drive configuration

Hi all

I have two 80GB IDE drives and I want to know what would be the best configuration. I need one active partition, one for 7, one for XP and another for storage.

I prefer not to install any OS on the active partition, what size and file system do you recommend for that partition?

 

The Active partition changes. When Win7 is booted it is the Active partition. When WinXP is booted it is the Active partition.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

I suggest you get a good boot manager like BootIt NG. Then you can have any number of OS on both of your HDs. As each OS will be independent of the others, their partitions can be moved or deleted without affecting the other OS. There will be no crosstalk between OS as they can't see each other but they can all see a common data partition if you desire.

 

I would install all the OS's on one drive and use the second drive as a data drive.

Just make sure to install xp first, then add windows 7. That is the recommended way to dual boot those 2 OS.

XP only needs a 10gb partition, I usually go 20gb. Windows 7 would need at least a minimum of 20gb.

 

^^^ This. Follow the multi boot standard of installing your oldest OS first, newer OS's in order after that. Move the pagefiles of both to your 2nd drive spindle, and redirect their My Docs/libraries to that second drive so you can share data.

 

Great link, thanks! Answered a lot of my other questions!

Using one drive for OS's and the other for data is a good suggestion too.

Thanks all