new hard drive and WinXP

hello the forum...

I am running Win98SE on a TBird 1gig w/256mb ram and a 30 gig IBM hard drive running on ATA66 (although I have ATA100 on the MB, due to IRQ conflict my system is better configured with the HD on ATA66) and partitioned into 5.

I have several questions and hope I don't get so complicated that no one wants to respond.

First, after hearing all the warnings about upgrading Win98 to XP, I am considering buying a new 40 gig Western Digital hard drive and installing it as the primary master with the old IBM as the primary slave. I would then boot from the CD and install XP on the new hard drive.

First, can I leave the old hard drive "as is" with win98 still on it and the old "C" still partitioned as the primary dos partition? Eventually, I would delete Win98 and perhaps even reformat the old partition.

Second, what are the pros and cons of leaving my old hard drive as fat32? I suppose that I would format and partition the new drive as NTFS. And I suppose that I would want to re-install all my apps on the new HD.

What are the pros and cons of partitioning the new hard drive--I like to keep the OS and data, and apps all separate from one another.

Is it better to have a 1 gig partition, reserved for the swap file, on the new drive (NTFS) or leave it on the old dive (where it is now)?

Thanks in advance....

Tight Stitches
DWFII--Member HCC

 

1--- Yup You could just slave the old one-- the system would boot from the primary hdd
You could purchase a

Mobile Rack

2----Why use XP at ALL?
Jump to 2000Pro when installing you can keep the Win98 while formatting the new partitions as NTFS. The xomputer will ask whether you want to start WIN98 or WIN2000. I use the mobile racks one hdd is loaded like the above sentence.

3 ---You can just slave the new hdd, for extra space if you like what you've got.

NTFS vs. FAT32: I am planning to install Windows XP, so which should I choose?

Optimizing the Swap File

Any other questions concerning Which OS to use, would be better posted in the General Discussions forum.
+ you may want to copy this link to the new post so people can see the entire question.

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