Dual boot XP Pro SP2 & Vista 64bit?

First, I have been reading Arkit3kt and Stallen's clean installs and I am really impressed with both, thanks to both of you.

I want to do a clean install with dual boot of XP Pro SP2 and Vista 64bit on my soon to be deliviered T61p. I will be wiping the drive completely including the hidden partion. It has a 100gig hard drive.

My questions:

1. What partition size should I alot for each operating system?

2. Does third party software get installed on their own (third) partion or with each operating system repectfully? (I will be using the same third party software in both XP Pro SP2 and Vista 64bit envirornments).

3. What format option should be done for each partion/operating system, FAT32 or NTSF?

Thanks for all the help.

 

I think I can answer the first two questions.

1) I've heard it said before, you should allocate 4x the OS install size, but of course that doesn't have to be a rule of thumb. XP uses ~1.5gb, whereas Vista uses ~8-10gb, so go from that. Mind you, 6gb is really too small for XP, I have 20, but that's only cause I have an 80gb hdd with dual boot.

2) You should install them separately, because most programs need to install registry settings, and might not be the same for every OS. So it's really a good idea to install for each OS you have.

3) That might be subjective. I personally use NTFS, it's supposed to be more efficient and use less space. Plus IIRC, some of the advanced security features (encryption, volume shadow copy) need NTFS, but I'm not positive on that.

Hope that helps.

 

I will just do 40gb for each partition and that will leave me with about 15gb for data storage. I keep most everything on my server anyway. I just need space when I travel and back up when I get back to the office.

Thanks for your help.

 

I think you should do more like 50GB each or dedicate more / less depending on what OS you will by using more extensively. For #2 any software at all will be installed on the portion of the dirve that corresponds to the OS you are installing it for. So basically, there is not a separate partition for software, it gets integrated into the OS by occupying the OS's partition. So you will only end up with 2 partitions and thats why I think you should use up all 100GB for each of your partitions. You can always use an external drive/ flash drive for any other kind of storage. Trust me you will want all the space you want, so that you can access it on the go as easily as possible.

Hope that helps. Sorry for making it long and confusing.

 

Is there any guide on how to dual boot vista and ubunto. I did a search on this forum but couldn't find it

 

You can create a partition for anything; during the installation of applications, you can direct the installation to anywhere you want. You get a choice, but by default it's in the partition of the OS.