bootcamp partition size

[smartalic34]

I've decided to do a little gaming on my MBP before it starts to become too slow to run anything somewhat recent... but I only have 30GB free on my internal hard drive.

what is the minimum partition size I'll need to run Windows XP and a game that, let's say, requires 4GB of hard drive space? does the partition need extra "head-room" above and beyond xp + the game?

I have a large external hard drive, for what it's worth... is it possible to install xp on this using bootcamp?

I'd like to avoid moving my stuff (pics, music, etc) off my internal.

any suggestions?

 

[eezing]

A fresh install of XP Pro with Service Pack 3 is about 5 gigs. So in your situation, 10 gigs would be the minimum I would partition for BootCamp and XP. Under normal circumstances, 20-25 gigs is ideal. But, you should be fine with 10.

 

[4np]

I have a 5 GB windows XP partition (NTFS) and I have installed all windows games (steam etc) on an USB 2.0 external harddrive (laptop drive, Max OS Journaled) with the machd driver in win xp. Works fine. I have about 1.5 GB free on my 5GB windows partition which is enough for swapping. The external drive is a little bit slow, but fast enough. Of course you can always choose to use a faster drive (like a FW 800 7200 RPM drive). I'd rather safe my internal HD space for Mac OS X instead of windows + games The few times I want to play games I'll just hook up the external drive instead

 

[smartalic34]

thanks for the great responses so far. very helpful!

these have led me to a idea, but not sure if it'll work:

my 320GB external is broken down into two partitions... an 80GB time machine partition and a ~225GB miscellaneous partition.
> what if I use software like silverkeeper to clone my internal into the miscellaneous partition, and then sweep all the random files there into that "clone" under, say the cloned Documents folder.

* can I then select the external clone partition as my startup disk, and run the bootcamp assistant from there, creating a windows partition on the external? then if I ever wanted to get rid of windows, the windows partition could be absorbed back into the miscellaneous partition using bootcamp assistant, leaving my time machine partition untouched.

does anyone foresee any problems, or might this work? will bootcamp assistant allow the creation of a windows partition on an external, despite it being a bootable partition?