Partion a knew HD?

I am going to install a knew 80g hd. as my master drive. I'm not sure how to partion it. I've heard to make the first partion for page file. Is this a good idea,how big,how do I designate it? I would also like to have a partion for XP,storing backups,one for maybe playing with linux sometime,what size? How do I copy my os. and files from my old drive(which is to be my slave) to this one? Can I add a partion to my slave without looseing data already on it?

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  HP. Pav.520W 512m ram SP2 XP home,WD.80g hard drive. TIA.

 

rather than copy your old OS over to the new drive, I would do a clean install of Windows on the new drive, and install all your programs separately, and then move your files over (or leave them on the old hard drive). this way you'll get a clean installation that should run much more efficiently.


all you need to do is pop in your windows disk, and boot from it. Windows setup will allow you to create partitions, and then choose 1 to format and install windows on.

creating a separate partition for pagefile is useles... unless its on a completely different drive. what you may want to do, after you have windows running on your new master drive, is turn off page file for that drive, and shove it all on the old, now 'slave' drive.

 

I don't know how to do this. Will this be faster for both drives,what is a good size,does it matter if it is the first partion or not? Thanks.

 

for now, just format and install windows on the new drive.

once that is done, in your system properties, on the advanced tab, you have a button for performance settings. on the advanced tab of the performance settings, there are the controls for your virtual memory, or 'paging file'.

from there, you can move the paging file off of your main drive, onto the slave drive.