Best partition/HD plan for capture/burn

[winifreid]

I currently run 98 and plan to upgrade to 2000 pro (is there a none pro?). I have 3 drives: WD 80 gig 8 meg ram, a maxtor 40 gig 2 meg and a 60 gig maxtor 2 meg (they are all ata 100 ide 7200 rpm drives). I want to keep my 98 on a drive just in case. I can either dual boot or change the boot device via the bios. I actually prefer the bios method since I only have to do it when I want to change the boot, not everytime I boot. Some information indicates that ntfs is slower on partitions less than 8 GB (or maybe 500 MG). So I guess I should keep any partitions bigger than 8. Also I would like to reserve a partition for system backup. It appears as though xxclone has overcome the problems with cloning a 2000/XP drive.
So my questions are:
How should I configure my drives/partitions, i.e. which one should I boot from?
How should I partition the drives?
Will any of this cause a problem with 98? I know I can't write to the ntfs partitions if I am in 98, but are there any other problems like 98 always asking to format the drives...?

Thanks
Mods: Is there some reason why posts in this forum don't appear in the "latest posts)?

[reboot]

98 won't even SEE the NTFS drive(s), so no worries there.
Set boot drive as the one with the 8 meg buffer, and put Win2k on it.
Use the 60 to capture to.
Use the 40 for backups/data/storage.
Trash 98, you won't need it, nor want it for anything after a bit anyhow.
I wouldn't partition anything, the drives are small enough as it is.

[winifreid]

I was unsure about which drive to load the OS since some indicate that you should capture to your fastest drive and it should be seperate from your OS. I want to keep my 98 since I have countless programs that I don't want to reinstall (at least not yet).

[reboot]

Then it matters what drive 98 is on.
Your boot drive should be fastest, but you could put it on one of the others, and use the fastest for capture. The basic idea is to have a separate drive for capture, not necessarily the fastest. They're all 7200rpm, so they can read/write fast enough to do full D1 captures. Other variables depend on your capture card, and software.