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>I disagree with this approach unless all you're doing is putting the system partition (where the NT loader resides) and minimal boot files on the small partition and then using the remainer as the boot partition (where NT itself resides) since you must have a minimal size swap file on the boot partition, and you're slightly better off putting that at a fixed size on a FAT partition. You end up hurting yourself having swap files allocated from multiple logical drives on a single physicial drive, and there are consequences for growing the registry if you underallocate a boot partition and fragment the registry and swap file spaces. OTOH, I'm also a sick puppy who tends to allocate a logical drive just for swap space on multiple physical drives....

My usual setup is a 504 MB partition that holds the NT Loader files and a copy of the i386 directory of the NT installation CD. On this drive, I also keep a copy of the latest service pack and any device drivers I need (NIC, Sound, etc.). I also keep this drive FAT for the most part. In the event that I need to re-install NT, I can boot to a floppy and everything I need is available. The actual NT installation goes on a new partition (NTFS).

I haven't had a problem yet. Of course I haven't installed Win2K yet so my 500 MB partition may not be enough space.