40 Gb hard drive--How much space for XP?

oomfoofoo · 08-10-2005, 01:30 PM

I'm going to reformat my 40 gig drive on my laptop. I want to keep XP on a small parition just in case of emergency, even though I haven't used it in a month or so, but I don't want to make it too small. The rest will go for Debian. When I install XP, I'll put all the updates, java, flash, firefox/thunderbird, AVG, spybot, adaware and that's about it. Any suggestions on how big or small I should make the XP partition?

Matir · 08-10-2005, 01:32 PM

0Gb.

Nah, just kidding. Umm, I'd give it at least a good 5 GB if only for the programs and so forth... 10 if you have tons of space.

oomfoofoo · 08-10-2005, 01:47 PM

I was thinking around 7 Gb for Windows, but if 5 Gb will be enough for the basics & a little left over. then I may go with that. I'll eventually get a bigger drive, but I'm in no real hurry to do so. It helps that I found that driver for Windows that lets me read/write ext2 partitions, so I don't have to have a shared partition to transfer files between XP & Linux. Thanks for the input.

Matir · 08-10-2005, 01:53 PM

What kind of software do you want installed under Win? I mean, if it'll just be a basic XP install, it's only about a gig... add in some tools and so forth, the install probably comes in around 4 gig, even with office.

oomfoofoo · 08-10-2005, 01:56 PM

I like to have all the security updates (SP2 and so on). 1 antivirus, 2 antispyware programs, java, flash, firefox & thunderbird. That way, if for some reason I have to switch back to XP for any length of time, my laptop will be pretty well protected.

Matir · 08-10-2005, 01:57 PM

5G should be enough, give it 6 maybe to be on the safe side.

oomfoofoo · 08-10-2005, 01:59 PM

Thank you.