60 Gig hard drive partition

[olopbob]

hard drive partition, crashes, install

I'm going to partition my 60 gig HD for the first time. After going through two total crashes,complete installs and reformats I want to create a small, second back-up O/S, to save down time, and allow me to have basic functions like a browser and email. I also want to create several small partitions for data backup (music, photos, program files and word documents). I'll be using Partitionmagic 7.0. My question is, how should I size these partitions? My main O/S will be Windows XP with MS Office 2000 Professional.I would like to use a smaller backup O/S and dual boot. I have a basic Win ME disk or should I use an open source O/S? I would like something very user friendly and I am familiar with ME (although it is a bit unstable). Perhaps someone knows of something smaller and easy to use.I would say Win 98 but I don't have access.

Also, what would be the best size for these partitions? I was thinking 20 Gig for XP, 15 Gig for second O/S and dividing the other 25 Gigs into 3-5, 5 to 8 Gig storage partitions. I may be totally wrong about this, so any help on the second O/S and partition size and setup is welcomed.

Thanks

 

[olopbob]

Note: Presently, I have 49 gigs on drive C, and 8 gigs on drive d, and both are ntfs which can't be changed back to fat 32 without format. Also XP is installed on drive C and one of the main reasons for partition is to protect it from a reformat or reinstallation.Manufacturer says I will get 60 gigs after partition

 

[SePhErUm]

FDISK is buggy.. It wouldn't let me partition a 75GB hdd in half.. it would only let me make a 7 gb partition.. Otherwise it said.. "the Number you have entered is over the max amount of space.

 

[Terrean]

you could try partition magic
it works fine for me

 

[olopbob]

Yeah, I'm going To use Partition Magic, and an online buddy just suggested putting a copy of my XP on second partition as backup. I thought this was a great idea, I just need to know how to boot to my original XP install first, and copy the file that will activate the Windows XP install on the second partition from the original.
I also need to figure the size for the second XP O/S partition and two others for storage.