Recommended partition sizes....

[Kevin Mullins]

Gonna be formatting my 250GB drive and want to partition it this time.
What would be some recommended partition sizes for:

WINXP
DOS
LINUX

Not sure what I'll actually do with it yet..... just gathering ideas.
I want to get a larger drive for backing up data and such and I want the OS's to be easily "repaired" when they decide to crap on me..... which always seems to happen from time to time.
The other reason for wanting to try and setup multiple OS's is I come across stuff I'd like to check out, but it is for some other OS which I don't normally have.

Like right now I'm trying to view and backup a drive that apparently has an older FreeBSD OS on it.... so obviously I'm stuck and can't do much with it. (Heck, I don't know diddly about it, so I'm not sure what would even allow me to "see" the data on it.

Any insight appreciated.

[protokatie]

WinXP 100 GB
Linux 100 GB
Dos 2GB (That is the max I think Dos can handle)
Add: Several other 1 - 2 GB partitions in FAT for the DOS OS to see.

Save the other 45 or so GB as un partitioned (for future use) or partitioned as a slave partition in FAT32 (so both Linux and XP can read and SAFELY write to it). Linux cannot fully safely write to an NTFS partition, so I would recommend that you have the XP partition as NTFS, the linux partition as EXT2 or FAT32, and also have the free space as a FAT32 so you can easily transfer files between linux and XP.

[Paul Olson]

I usually use 60-80 for XP. Probably the same for linux, although I only used 20gb this time - just playing and that was the space I had available. Don't forget a swap partition for linux. I just bought a 1.5TB drive, and I left 200GB unpartitioned in case I want to try something new.

[richms]

I would never voluntarily use a fat-32 formatted drive. ntfs-3g is rock solid on linux from my considerable testing with moving large amounts of tv and movies on and off e-sata and USB drives.

Fat has too often lost files for me with unclean disconnections or just because it felt like it, NTFS gets them back on a chkdsk if they are gone.

[DaveMMR]

My XP partition is only 30GB but I gave all installed programs it's own partition and then another partition for space allocated to the swap file (about 8GB). 

Although XP only needs 1.5GB of space (minimum requirements),  Vista wants at least 20GB and Windows 7 wants at least 16.  I would say 30 or 40gb is good for upgrading purposes (though if you multi-boot, it's not so much a problem - and you can always repartition your drive).

[Kevin Mullins]

Thanks for all the tips.....

I plan to keep each OS install fairly small - but not struggling small.

Even if I create a "Programs" partition, I assume I would still have to reinstall those programs if I should ever have to wipe the OS and reformat. (ie if WinXP hopelessly crashes on me) Due to registry entries, drivers, etc right?

As far as a swap file partition - would that just be a standard partition that you would "direct" an OS to use? Or does it have to be specific/assigned to an OS?