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Reinstalling WinXP - Should I split my faster drive?

J

Jman13

Senior member
I'm going to be reinstalling WinXP here very shortly. (still on the original install from nearly 3 years ago, even with huge hardware upgrades and about 150GB of software). Anyway, I have a relatively new 200GB Seagate drive with about 60 GB stored on it, divided into two partitions, one is 130GB, the other 70GB used for video and audio scratch space. My boot drive is an older 20GB Maxtor, and I have another 80GB Barracuda for data.

I know that the new Seagate is by far the fastest drive in the machine, but it has data on it, and I don't really want to jeapordize the data by using PM or some other utitility to add a partition to create the boot drive on it. Also, how would that work...can I create a new primary partition in front of the current primary, or would I need to split it and copy the data from the one to the other?

Anyway, the Maxtor has been fine, but it's getting old, and I'm sure my system would be much faster if installed on the Seagate. That said, it would be much, much, much easier to do the reinstall on the Maxtor...no new partitions, just format and install.

I'd get a new, inexpensive 60GB drive or something if the computer didn't need a new install badly...it's having all sorts of problems recently that nothing has fixed, so the time has come to wipe it clean.

I've got my slipstreamed SP2 XP install CD all ready, just need to figure out this last part.
 
I would say install Windows on the fastest drive - I have alot of data on my primary harddrive and although some call me stupid I saved money by just getting one drive instead of many.

It's all up to you though. How precious is that data to you?
 
Well, the data on the fast drive now is 4 GB of digital photos (personal), and about 35 GB of uneditied home video. I can easily make a backup DVD of the photos (which I do every month anyway), and I can recapture the video from the original miniDV cassettes if the HD got corrupted in the split.

One thing I'm concerned about though...can the boot partition be an extended partition, or must it be the primary? If I can use an extended partition, are there stability concerns with that setup?

Also...Is there a good freeware / shareware partition manager for splitting partitions on the fly, without loss of data? It seems stupid to spend $75 on Partition Magic when I can just buy a new 60GB HD for that price and render it moot.

Jman
 
http://www.ranish.com/part/
This is a free tool that I have heard about, but never used.

I have Partition Magic 7 and have used it many times. It can cause serious problems!
You must backup first before you make any changes, or you take a chance!

You can get PM8 OEM from here for $28.95.
http://store.viosoftware.biz/popa80.html

I believe at least a small primary partition is required to contain some boot files. The rest like the Windows folder can be on an extended partition.
 
What I would do...

Toss the 20gigger. Partition the 200Gig into 2 or 3 partitions depending on what you have. 1 partition is like 15-30 gigs. This is for windows, programs, games. The other partition(s) for music, movies, other media
 
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