"Bob J." wrote:
| It's been many years since I used PM, so decided to try Acronis because
it's
| available at work - bad choice, perhaps. Does PM require CD or floppy
boot,
| or does it do all under XP?
* I've never used acronis but in either case you'll need to do the floppy
(or CD-Rom) boot. You wouldn't be allowed to resize the operating system
partition while the OS is running. You'll need to shrink and or move one of
the others in order to make room to expand the OS partition.


| The array configuration looks a little strange to me - When I goe to XP
Disk
| Management, the OS (boot?) partition and the SW partition show up as a
| logical drives, and the other two are "primary". Some of the menu choices
| are grayed out on the OS and SW, too.
* Note that Microsoft defines the boot partition for the partition where the
operating system is installed, while the system partition is the first
primary active partition (where the boot sector resides) The system
partition can also be the boot partition for one operating system. Sounds
like either the 'Installables' or 'Data' partition is the system partition.


| Are there any disadvantages to separate partitions? (except, of course for
| the extra complexity). My original intent was to limit the OS partition
size
| while allowing lots of space for SW installs to expand while still
allowing
| for easy OS format and reinstall if required.
* Generally speaking it's advisable to create a suitably sized parition for
the operating system and software and then, depending on personal
preference, have one or more data partitions.



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect