[clue-tech] how much room?

[Nate Duehr]

Roy J. Tellason wrote:

> However I've had the occasional idle thought that it might be good for me to 
> have XP on some box somewhere,  just to be able to refer to it or maybe run 
> an app that wouldn't run any other way or whatever the case may be.  So I 
> decided to leave it on this box,  though with way less space than the whole 
> drive it was using to begin with.

In this case, when I was gung-ho about having Linux be "primary" and 
Windows as an add-on that was rarely used (also how I handle this on OSX 
machines), I like using Virtualization and a disk "file" instead of 
giving Windows its own partition.

That way the "image" can be made bigger if needed, by whatever mechanism 
the virtualization tool uses -- that is either easy or hard depending on 
whether or not you have to reinstall Windows on a new image, etc... but 
basically the "Windows disk" just takes up filesystem space on the 
"host" OS instead of having to mess with partitioning if you use 
Virtualization and don't mind the performance hit.

If you really want to run Windows "natively" then you have to go with 
the partitition.  I've gotten away (easily) with partitions about 6 GB 
big for XP with all service packs, patches, and applications I wanted... 
but very little room left for big data like an ISO image, etc... if you 
only deal with "normal" sized files in Windows, it would work... if you 
need space for video or other large files, just take that into account 
when you pick your final size.

Nate