virtual xp: should it go in its own partition?

I just went ahead and installed it into the Windows 7 partition. The partition is 40 gigs.

Bad idea? Partition size too small? Any other thoughts? I don't know that I'll ever use virtual xp, but I don't want a jacked up install either.

 

If it's anything like Virtual PC (which I believe it is), it doesn't matter where you put it because it generates a file that acts like a hard drive. If you don't use it, typically the file is dynamic so it should remain fairly small. But if you do use it, you'll probably want more then 40GB on that partition, depending on what you use it for.

I did not realize that Virtual XP was available for 7 yet, I'll have to give it a go!

 

Well, if you're using Virtual XP for the actual purpose that it's intended for (that is, installing a few oddball apps that won't run properly under Windows 7) then you'll be fine. Unlike something like VMWare or the old Virtual PC, you'll not actually be running Virtual XP as a full blown independent OS complete with data storage, etc. (You could, but why would you?) It's just a framework for installing troublesome apps...and those apps won't take up any more space under Virtual XP than they would installed under Windows 7 proper. So that's a wash.

 

It's superslow at loading in my notebooks- If this continues, I'll probably just go with VMWare Server or dual boot with XP-

 

no, sir, it's a full virtual xp. you can just as well take virtual pc, and set up an xp in it. the only difference: virtual xp doesn't show the xp desktop by default, but shows a remotedesktop only to the apps, in individual windows.

it's still a full vmware/virtualpc.

 

You're right, and I realize that. I wasn't really clear in what I meant.

The difference I'm suggesting is that since in Virtual XP you're actually interfacing with the host drives for data (ie, an app installed in Virtual XP can read and write to the hosts local drives as opposed to having its own data store on the virtuial drive) that the only true additional space required is the initial installation on Virtual XP itself. Subsequent app installs will take up the same amount of host disk space whether they're installed directly on the Windows 7 host drive or in the Virtual XP machine.

I guess my point to the OP was that (on my machiine) the install of Vistual XP absorbs about 1 GB of space. Since it won't be used for it's own data storage or anything like that, that's my entire overhead to have it there. In effect (if not necessarily in actuality) it simply functions as a 1 GB framework for running apps.

I fear I'm still not really articulating what I meant to convey with regards to whether the OP will be OK running it in his 40 GB partition, but I've gotta cut the grass.

 

That's ok. I get that way when I have to cut the cheese.

 

I don't think it much matters. Carving up a big hard drive into multiple partitions only helps with the human side of 'managability' if you are married to drive lettering. Doesn't do anything for performance or 'safety'.

As far as running XP in a VM, I've been using VirtualBox for a year or more with XP, Vista, and now Win7 as hosts supporting XP, Vista, Win7, and various Unix/Linuxii as guests. I'm very happy with the performance especially on machines with 2Gb of real memory and less. IMHO the ONLY thing that VMWare has over VB is their slightly smoother shared/virtual folder setups. VB is getting better in that regard.

Compared to MSFT VirtualPC, both VMware and VB kick a$$. Then it gets down to price. VB is free.

 

VMWare Server is free-

 

Virtual PC is also free - if you have the right version of Windows

 

It won't give you a jacked up install of Windows 7. Virtual PC will simply store the installation of XP insde of a single file on your 7 installation - that file acts as a "virtual harddrive" that XP will be installed into. So in the end, the virtualized XP is just a single file on your Windows7 installation.

Putting the virtual harddisk file on a separate, dedicated partition (the virtual harddisk, not the VirtualPC installation!) would likely lead to higher performance for the virtualized XP. But you don't need to do that if you're not using it heavily and are not experiencing any performance problems.

 

ok i think i got what you ment, but that'll be true with any vm solution. doesn't matter if an app is installed into the vm (diskfile), or locally on disk. same space. and userdata isn't a problem as well. except if you make a copy of your userdata into the vm, which you shouldn't. any vm can do network or direct connections so that you can access all your data (even if it's just over remote desktop. even that can share data directly ).

so it has the same overhead as any virtual solution: the virtuality, and the os.

 

vmware server was great before 2.0. now it's so utter crap i never touch it again i had 1.0 on a p4, very old, working perfectly. updated to 2.0 as i had made some other reinstallations and didn't had the old setup. 10 min till the services where up, the new "gui", a.k.a. crappy webinterface respondet once a minute. terrible.

webification is just terrible the old one was working perfectly...

nowadays i use virtualbox mostly, too.

 

I still use 1.0.

I agree, 2.0 is unusable.

Haven't tried Virtual Box-