[J3Vr6]

In the ever present quest to upgrade this computer (now that I got it running), I am now considering moving away from Win 98 and head over to Win XP.  How much harddrive space do I need for Windows XP?

Thank you, drive thru.

[kasperl]

depends

2GB for the OS seems reasonable, if i look at what it takes on my laptop. you might want to keep plenty of swap space free though.

[HotSnoJ]

10GB would be a nice safe bet. It's what I use on the partition XP is on.

[J3Vr6]

I only have a 8 gig harddrive that I could put it on... it's what my win 98 was on.  Was planning on formatting and putting on XP.

[HotSnoJ]

woa wait a sec, what are the comps specs? You want more then what MS says for minimum specs. WAY more.

[Arc]

Most XP installs I've seen use about 1.5Gb for its own directory. Seems to be you'll want to add on at least 1.5x your RAM to make room for your pagefile (I've got 512Mb RAM, so my pagefile's 768Mb). Your 8Gb drive's plenty big enough.

@HotSnoJ: If it's the same machine that's J3Vr6's been building recently it's an xp1700 on a new mobo - can't remember what the rest of the specs are, but it sounded more than capable.

[kasperl]

1,5 times the mem is a reasonable amount, for linux or win9x.

i'd say at least a gig, and once you get more then 512MB of real RAM, go with what Arc said.

[Bobboau]

you'll want at the bare minimum 5 gigs, it'ss work with half of that, but you won't be able to install any drivers or anything

[kasperl]

also, in case you have any less then 512 MB of memory, it better be a fast HD too, cause your going to be swapping like mad. even if i just have IE, Word and Winamp running, i have a 384 meg pagefile, while i have 256MB physical mem.

do yourself a favour, keep 98SE, or run RedHat

[Arc]

If you're letting XP manage its own pagefile, it'll always start out 1.5x your ram and XP won't shrink it past that. 384 is 1.5x 256, so I'd expect it to be at least that big even if it's not being all used.

J3Vr6: I've seen a definite speed increase upgrading a machine from 256->512, so like Kasp said you'll be running slower than you could be if you've got less than 512Mb.

[Thorn]

I had to keep adding more space to the partition my XP install is on, there was nothing else installed on that drive except Lightwave, Photoshop and Office and its taking up nearly 6 gigs. I empty the temp folders frequently.

[J3Vr6]

I bought another stick of 256, so right now I'm at 512 megs of RAM.

And in terms of specs, Arc is correctomundo.  It's 1700xp, with a Geforce 2 MX 32megger.  It's got 2 Harddrives, an 8 gig that was used only for Win98 and typical installs (like Office) and another 30 gig HD that's partitioned to 10megs and 20megs.  I can't touch this 30 gig though cuz it's jam-packed full of music and movie goodness.  I think if I sneezed on it it would burst open thats how full it is.

So Kasperl said I should stick with 98.  Who thinks I should do that or go to XP?  What benefit would I get going to XP?

[diamondgeezer]

XP = more reliable (no BSOD! yay!) but less accessable (in terms of admin controls). But it's miles better than 98 - I've left an XP box running for a month before I had to reset it

Myself, I got XP on a five gig partition, with a 1gb pagefile - I'm told it ought to be double your physical RAM and have an identical max and min setting for best performance...

[Arc]

Everyone's got their own favourite and most hated versions of windows, but it's all down to personal experience. I hated Win95, had only a couple of problems with 98 and none with 2k/XP.

Personal choice for me is XP (although I turn off the cutesy theme and simplified security): you've got enough hd space, memory and speed to run it. MS has/will be dropping support for 98 and it's known for not handling large amounts of ram exceptionally well (anything above 384 I think). XP's definately much more stable for me.

[an0n]

XP automagically expands into all available space, so the size of your drive doesn't really matter.