[CentOS] Dual boot box: WinXP & CentOS 5: Impossible to restoreWinXP?

Tue Nov 20 20:52:35 UTC 2007
Nicolas Thierry-Mieg <Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg at imag.fr>


Nicolas Sahlqvist wrote:
> I top that with another 10 - 20 GB, assume you got a DVD iso to burn,
> so you make a copy and due to the effective native copy file feature,
> expect a copy to be placed in some temp folder on C: why you need
> another 5 - 8 GB free and then the space the DVD occupies.. This is
> also true if you copy between 2 SMB shares, even if none of them are
> on the local machine, it's neat iand effective isn't it?
> 
> On 11/20/07, Bart Schaefer <barton.schaefer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Nov 20, 2007 9:19 AM, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg
>> <Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg at imag.fr> wrote:
>>> I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but since you don't talk
>>> about this in your summary above: one thing I would recommend is create
>>> (at least) 2 partitions for MS: a small (5 to 10 G) for the system, and
>>> a larger one for data.
>> I'd second this, but I'd say it's much better to go in the direction
>> of 10G than 5.  I installed WinXP  on a Mac Mini (BootCamp) with 5GB
>> on the internal drive and everything else on a firewire external
>> drive, and now after about a year of automatic updates that 5GB is so
>> nearly consumed that I'm having to shuffle things around by hand to
>> keep it working.  It's just too damn difficult to prevent Windows
>> software from dumping crap on the C: drive (and then referencing its
>> location in the registry so it becomes nearly impossible to relocate
>> it).

OK, so it depends on what you want to do under windows I guess...
the box I'm writing from is my main home computer, and has a 3G windows 
system partition... it's doing fine!
Today I'ld probably make that 5G (this 3G partition dates back from feb 
2005), but certainly not more than 10G
but then I only boot into windows for games and the occasional MS office 
document that I absolutely *must* work on and that doesn't look normal 
in open office.
if/when free space gets low, it's time for a ghost cleanup.
In fact this way you don't even need to defrag the system partition, 
just ghost it! it's much faster (of course you want to defrag before 
making images).

I really think a regular ghosting is a great MS hygiene habbit, and if 
the partition is too big you'll be tempted to put useful stuff on it

BTW I wouldn't want to use software that needs 5G of free space 
somewhere that I can't configure - that's seriously broken!
use another software, or if it's dual boot just burn your dvds in linux


enough rambling, just think about what you want to do with your windows 
before deciding on your system partition size