If it was me, and I was dual-booting Win98SE and Win2K, I'd put at least two partitions on the second drive ... perhaps even three or four.
First ... Win98SE and Win2K can use the same paging file, and that should be on the second drive for performance (as you already know.) This doesn't necessarily need to be in a separate partition, but you may prefer to do it this way in order to decrease fragmentation. If so, due to the amount of memory in your system, I'd make the partition 1536MB. Win2K, by default, will set the paging file minimum size at half again the amount of RAM physically installed in the system, and the maximum amount twice that. With this much virtual memory, in a separate partition, you'll need never worry about paging with either OS.
The next partition I'd create just for Win2K.
The third for extra third-party programs, such as games.
The fourth for personal files.
I'd distribute the free space among the three major partitions evenly.
There are a couple of advantages to the partitioning. One, the cluster size will be smaller, so the drive will be more efficient due to reduced slack space. Two, if you ever suffer an impending failure of the secondary drive, you'll have a little extra time to be able to move your personal files off the drive. I've had a drive fail twice this year while running a dual-boot ... and by using the XCOPY command from a Win98 DOS Prompt, I was able to save the majority of my files and move them to the primary drive. Without an extra partition, that wouldn't have been possible.
Also ... having smaller parities will make it easier to back up with Drive Image. The program works best if the image is placed on a separate partition on the hard drive, and then burned to CD's.
If course ... this is assuming the file system is FAT32, which is best for a dual-boot. But ... if you migrate to Win2K and drop Win98 completely, the situation changes somewhat.
Cluster sizes in NTFS don't get larger and larger as the size of the partition is increased. The maximum cluster size is 4kb for all partitions over 2.0GB, regardless of their size. So the problem of increased slack space as the partition size increases is null and void.
This means, with a single OS installation of Win2K, NTFS is the best choice for efficiency. It is also more secure than FAT32, making it more difficult to become infected with a boot sector virus.
With two hard drives, Win2K, and NTFS, I'd have three partitions. One on the primary, and two on the secondary.
The active partition for the OS, of course. The first partition on the second hard drive for the paging file. The rest for personal files. I'd pay more attention to having an organized directory structure when using NTFS than worrying about whether my personal programs were installed in the primary active partition.
Note: Partitions over 32GB don't <i>have</i> to be NTFS. But if you use the Win2K disk to create NTFS partitions, that will be the limitation. If you want larger partitions, create them with a Win98 boot disk, and then install the OS. You can always go back later and convert the partitions from FAT32 to NTFS, whenever you wish. You won't suffer any performance degradation doing this in Win2K, unlike in NT 4.0.
There is a limit to the amount of partitions that I'd place on the drives. Too many partitions, and you'll just end up having to resize them if a volume becomes full.
If you are wondering about gaming and NTFS ... it doesn't matter. File system calls are handled by the OS, not the application. It may be even faster than FAT32, because it is very good at indexing (locating and reading individual file headers.
Of course, you might be interested in knowing that I'm not anywhere near to following my own advice. <GRIN> I'm running two drives, each partitioned in half ... both FAT32. If there is any system performance loss ... I don't see it. And I don't have to deal with defragging the MFT, or having the paging file in 32 segments, etc. I compress all my installation files with WinZip, and move them onto CD's. I don't mess around with boot-time defragmenting, except to move organize the directories. I keep the system clean, and defrag everyday ... and everything runs fine.
I guess I'm just basically lazy at heart, and this setup was sufficient for me! But if you are determined to squeeze all the speed possible out of your system, don't do as I do ... do as I say! LOL!
That's my contribution. Varying crazed opinions are encouraged! I think.
Yeehaw!!
Toejam31
P.S. Here's a link that will keep you occupied for a while:
<A HREF="http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/index.htm" target="_new">http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/index.htm</A>
<font color=red>My Rig:</font color=red> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>
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<font color=blue>"Does history record any case in which the majority was right?" ... Robert A. Heinlein</font color=blue>