Create the C: partition of your desired size with the Win ME bootdisk, leave the rest of the hard drive space unformatted/unallocated, and install Windows ME.

After Windows ME is installed, run Windows XP Setup and install Windows XP in the unallocated space. Windows XP Setup will offer to format the unallocated space as FAT32 or NTFS, if the space is under 32 binary GB. If the unallocated space is more than 32 binary GB, Windows XP Setup will format the unallocated space only as an NTFS partition.

Windows XP will not create FAT32 partitions larger than 32 binary GB, so if you want there to be any other FAT32 partitions larger than 32 binary GB, you'll have to format them beforehand with the WinME bootdisk, or use the free open source GParted (Gnome Partition Editor), performing your partition setups booting the system from the GParted Live CD.

XP can, however, be installed onto a pre-created FAT32 partition exceeding 32 binary GB, or XP Setup can convert any existing FAT32 partition to NTFS before it installs XP on it (and that's the best time to do a FAT32-to-NTFS conversion!).

GParted, in my experience, occasionally creates partition cluster sizes smaller than normal for FAT32/NTFS partitions. When I put a new 120 GB HD in my laptop, it formatted the 13 GB NTFS "E" (XP O.S.) partition with a 512 byte cluster size ('default' is 4 KB) and the 90 GB FAT32 "D" data partition with a 16 KB cluster size ('default' is 32 KB). It did format the 8 GB FAT32 "C" partition (Win98 Boot) with the 'default' 4 KB cluster size.

Since I didn't want the smaller cluster sizes, I had to reformat "D" from 98 (with the updated FDISK installed, of course!), then let XP Setup reformat the third partition (as NTFS) to get the default 4 KB cluster size I wanted.

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Athlon 1.1 - 768 MB RAM = 98SE & XP Home

Athlon 3000+ 64 - 1024 MB RAM = 98SE (@768 MB RAM) & XP Pro

IBM ThinkPad PIII 900 - 384 MB RAM = 98SE & XP Pro SP2

Windows 2000 Server in the basement

Written in response to: formatting partition for dual-boot (david: Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 6:29 pm) Responses to this message: re: 3rd party not needed, but I have one for you anyway! (david: Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 10:03 pm) re: 3rd party not needed, but I have one for you anyway! (david: Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 11:57 pm)

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