Windows 2000 and partitions..... again

[winifreid]

I currently run 98 and plan to upgrade to 2000 pro (is there a non 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, 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. This might also make it easier to create bootable backups with xxclone. So one partition/drive for will be reserved for system backup. It appears as though xxclone has overcome the problems with cloning a 2000/XP drive.
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. So my questions are:

How should I configure my drives/partitions, i.e. which one should I boot 2000 from?
How should I partition the drives? Should I have a partition just for the page file?

Thanks

[ppera2]

You need to install Win 2000 on free primary partition.
Which drive, it's your choice. But...
I recommend that install it on your primary master drive, and use some boot manager, not to select in BIOS. It is more work, and you may experience troubles when change drive order.

So, create another primary partition on primary master - it will not go with Fdisk. Use Partition Magick or similar. As boot manager, there is Ranish Partition Manager for free.