>>Boot can be 4GB as FAT (not the same as DOS/Win9x FAT16 behavior, but entirely >true!), or up to 7.8GB with NTFS and drivers that support it (updated ATAPI >and IDE drivers came out with either SP4 or 5, and details on how to are >online at
www.ntfaq.com) and Win2K can be...big.
>
>I wasn't aware you could have a 4 gig FAT partition with NT. You can only have 2gig if you format the drive with dos first, because that's dos's upper limit. I guess you are saying you can repartition to 4 gig, or would you use NT to partition the drive, say from the CD? My normal routine involves creating a 2 gig dos partition and copying the i386 folder from the cd, then doing a winnt /b install from c:\i386.
Build the 3 disk NT install disk set (or install from CD if your system supports that) and have NT create the partition - it can be as large as 4GB (actually, the rule is less than 4GB; the exact size depends on how your BIOS renders the drive's logical geometry). Don't create any other partitions - NT's Disk Admin tool can partition and format the remainder after the base install.
You're going to have to allocate swap file space on this partition; you only want to have one swap file allocated on a physical drive, no matter how many logical drives you break it into. You can get sizable, measurable benefits from allocating some swap file space on more than one physical drive, especially using SCSI where NT can take advantage of TCQ and disconnect/reconnect permitting several devices on the SCSI bus to have simultaneous operations in progress at once.
If you use a third party product like Partition Magic 4.0 to create an NTFS ahead of time, you may be able to create a boot partition as large as 7.8GB as an NTFS partition; this is very dependent on BIOS services being able to describe the drive for NTLOADER.
Do yourself a favor and take a run out to
www.ntfaq.com; it's a great site, and you can download their FAQ in .CHM or .HLP format. It's updated regularly. If you do NT or Win2K on a more than minimally casual basis, you'll find all sorts of good stuff there.
