I would like to know a few things.

How much room would XP require as a minimum to function? (Taking into consideration that there has to be room for updates, cached files and other things Windows XP might require)

If I were to make a different partition for let's say.. Music, games, movies, applications and Windows on an 80GB maxtor and leave my 30GB Seagate (Older drive) for backups.

Would I increase the overal speed and efficiency of my Maxtor (80 GB) if I were to create several partitions for the types of files I would like to store?

Or would the performance STAY the same? I have never tried this, I am not too fond of formatting considering that I have a Windows XP upgrade and first have to go through installing Windows 98. Last time I tried, I must have USED (according to a computer store 'expert') a faulty Fdisk.

I donot recall how I created this Fdisk, I believe I downloaded it.

Would this be more efficient and faster? Or would I just run into problems later on?

Also, where does one place the swapfile? I believe I told Windows to store it on my 30GB Seagate (Slower disk).

What exactly does the swap file do? Is it important to have it stored on the same disk?I have 2 drives with 2 partitions each.  The first has 20G for C: and 100G for files.  The second has 25G for downloads and 175G for files.  I don't think there is any improvement in performance on the first drive since all the applications are installed to it and if I want to access a file on partition 2 the drive has to work just as hard to FIND the physical location of the file (1 drive doing 2 things at once).  I do have an increase in performance if I'm accessing a file on drive 2 though since I now have 2 drives doing different things (2 drives doing 1 thing at once each).

The XP installation is, I'm guessing, around 3G with updates etc.

By having all your files in a separate drive or partition, you free yourself up to format the C: anytime and not worry about losing data.  This, of course, ASSUMES you don't blow the partitions AWAY when you format.