Windows XP reinstallation on two drives

I need to reinstall XP Pro and I was thinking about partitioning my drive and putting the OS on one partition and the Documents and Settings on another. Is there a way to do this during installation? I thought that I had mistakenly done this a few years ago but I can't seem to find any documentation on it.

thx

 

Microsoft may have the answer.

However, they don't say this works with XP, so YMMV...

I did try to move mine with Registry changes, etc. Some programs just ignored the registry and installed bits to C:\Docs & Sets\Application Data as standard. I finally settled for just moving My Docs, Music, Pics and Email.

 

Two ways I can think of doing this, either individually move all the folders within Docs and settings (use TweakUI) or map your second partition to C:\Documents and Settings. So D:\ becomes C:\Documents and Settings.

In order to do the latter in XP you need a dual boot, as it physically wont allow you to move or delete system files that are in use (I've not found a way around this):

-Log into the second O/S (not main)
-Move all of the folders/files under C:\Documents and Settings to the new partition
-Go to computer management (under admin tools)
-Then disk management
-Right click on the partition you want the Docs and Settings to be moved to
-Select Change Drive Letters and Paths
-Click on Add
-Select Mount the following NTFS folder
-Browse to the now empty Documents and Settings folder
-Done!
-Boot back into the first O/S and the Documents and Settings will save to D:\ even though it appears as though they are saving them to C:\Docs....

That will mount the partition to the C:\Documents and Settings. Nothing will physically exist at C:\D... just the mount link thingy.

I know it's awkward having a dual boot to do this in XP, but hard drives are huge and cheap now, and a second partition on your main, of about 10gb for a second XP install (2000 also works) isn't much to ask for.

 

For more detail and alternative ways to do it, look at Zapwizards guide @:

http://www.zapwizard.com/Guides/Partitioning/index.html

It was my first point of call a couple of years back, and ever since I've built upon what it taught me to split my O/S install across 4 HDD's with 8 partitions total. I like the modular approach to Windows