partition 1tb drive

ok i'm about to start fresh and make 3 partitions on the 1tb drive.windowsxp/windows7 and rest for gaming and apps.whats the minimum reccomended of space i should give each os? is 20gig ok?

i have xp on 15 and win7 on 20 with just a little bit of free space.

when i pre-partitioned the HDD winxp did not like it, so i had to let winxp install, then run a partition program.

keep in mind winxp came out back in 2001 before there were these big HDD.

also, winxp will be obsolete next year 2014 in march when MS stops releasing updates.

win7 will be around thru 2020. MS stops releasing service packs in 2015 and updates in 2020.

you will have winxp in the primary partition and then in extended you will have win7 in the first partition in extended and then other stuff in the second partition in extended.

so the problem then lays with next year when winxp is obsolete and you want to delete it, recover that space, and have win7 in your primary partition.

things get messy as there is no (easy) way to combine an extended partition with a primary partition.

thatll be a year from now and typically people reinstall their OS yearly to clean it up and start fresh.

Quote from ReverseHandedJO : i have xp on 15 and win7 on 20 with just a little bit of free space. when i pre-partitioned the HDD winxp did not like it, so i had to let winxp install, then run a partition program. keep in mind winxp came out back in 2001 before there were these big HDD.

Windows 7 requires 20GB x64.... I would recommend 40GB and give it room to grow.
Most native boot VHDs are 40GB for that reason.

XP only needs < 1.5GB but most recommend 4GB for minimum... more for more

So OP... 20 is certainly OK for XP.... need more for 7

Quote from boltman2007 : Windows 7 requires 20GB x64.... I would recommend 40GB and give it room to grow. XP only needs < 1.5GB but most recommend 4GB

he didnt say 32 or 64, but i can see 64 needing more space.

my winxp was 10 when i last reinstalled it with the service packs and updates.

Quote from ReverseHandedJO : he didnt say 32 or 64, but i can see 64 needing more space. my winxp was 10 when i last reinstalled it with the service packs and updates.

XP depends a lot on what else is taking up space...


Size of SP3 is only about 320MB

That being said it doesn't hurt to make XP partition larger.

I'd say 15 GB is fine

ok cool.so when installing windowsxp i would select size as 15,000,000,000 bytes correct?

If you want to have XP work well, you'll give it at least 20 gigs of space and 80 gigs fo 7.
Bear in mind that an OS will slow down substantially, when the drive is more than 50% full.
App data accumulates, some programs don't offer the option of installing on another partition, the OS bloats with time, etc.
You have a ton of room on the hard drive and you shouldn't skimp on the OS partitions.
They need "room to breathe" to work properly.