New installation of XP on new HDD

well, Western Digital was kind enough to send me a brand spankin' new HDD to replace one of theirs that bit the dust, so I fugured it was time to build a new PC..which of course calls for a new installation of XP PRO. I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions, tip and/or tricks to protect the new installtion and keep it running smooth for as long as possible! I had heard that you can create a partition roughtly the size of the XP Installation after you install it to protect it. I am considering doing this especially since Im a big fan of downloading programs then removing them if Idont like them.....windows doesnt always like this..what are your thoughts....will a partition help?

ive never heard that partitoin thing.,, nor see how it would fix anything. just be sure you format NTFS for efficiency in the OS. and when you get all your progs reinstalled, create a restore disk in XP and copy it somewhere, like to blank cds or another hard drive... this will make future recovery go much faster.

Don't play musical Recycle Bin with the System32 directory.

i have a 80 gig maxtor ata133 drive and when i do a clean install i like to have my operating system on about a 12 gig partition, then i use the rest for storage, i make a fixed page file at 2.5 times my ram and fat32 file system 16k clusters, ive tried everything i can think of and it runs best there. ALLEN

allen337 said:

i have a 80 gig maxtor ata133 drive and when i do a clean install i like to have my operating system on about a 12 gig partition, then i use the rest for storage, i make a fixed page file at 2.5 times my ram and fat32 file system 16k clusters, ive tried everything i can think of and it runs best there. ALLEN

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with newer OS's and faster computers you dont need that much page file.. now the recommended is only 3/4 X RAM, the rest is just overkill, little info for ya

I myself like taking a smaller drive, 30-40gigs and using the whole thing for OS install.. and using other drives for data, I dont like choping up the system drive for some reason