1,1 running Lion with XP Boot (re-install and what should i use for recovery disk or usb stick)?

Question

i am trying to give my 1,1 mac pro a little love and would like to keep this machine running lion. i also have a boot camp installation of XP on it.
1. can anyone give me instructions on how/whether i can basically do a fresh install of Lion on this machine and minimize the system so it is not cluttered up with all my previous software etc, etc while still maintaining the original XP boot camp partition which i really need to have?
2. can anyone clarify for me what i should have on hand /if/ i need to boot into recovery mode or some other safe boot mode? i recently ran into an issue where i may have had to use the old Disk Utility format function and there was a reference to booting using the DVD install disks. however i am really confused as to what i should have on hand. ALSO the last time i had to do something on this machine i was told to boot into the Recovery Partition and it appears for some reason (perhaps because i had a "non-standard" windows 7 boot camp installation on the drive at the time??) that there was no recovery partition created when i upgraded to Lion.
- /anyway/ i am finding that i have the two ORIGINAL install disks for the mac pro on hand, a Max OS X Leopard and a mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD on hand but i am thinking that i should be creating some kind of USB stick similar to the one i created with yosemite? actually, i am not even sure what this USB stick for yosemite is for but i guess i can use it to boot into safe mode or something?
THANKS for any help as i'd like to get this business under control a little better in case i have an issue.
i'd also like to install Lion so that there is a Recovery Partition if possible and i think this may be possible if i don't have the windows 7 partition in the machine when i do a fresh install. any help would be great. thanks.

Answer 1

You have to go out of your way to build the Installer Disk yourself. But this tool makes it easy, and this site contains instructions:
http://diskmakerx.com
the bootable installer is basically to re-install the OS if i have to
Yes.
the recovery partition is somehow for fixing a problem
Recovery can go and get you the software and re-download it and start the Install, and allows the use of Disk Utility and can reset passwords.
or is there some overlap?
Yes. Both give you access to the Utilities that used to be on the Installer DVD. Disk Utility to Repair or initialize and a few other tools that can allow you to set up to install on an otherwise-bare disk or change your password.
is "Safe Mode" something completely different
Safe Mode is a way to start the fully-Installed Operating System in a special way. It first does one pass of Disk Utility (Repair Disk) against the Boot Drive. [Normally this would require booting from a different drive to make repairs.] Then it loads a minimal set of Apple-only kernel extensions, and uses a one-size-fits-all screen resolution. Then it demands your Username and password to proceed.
From there you can fix settings, use the Finder to add or delete things, and check operation with minimal extensions versus all your daily-use extensions. Very helpful for debugging extension conflicts and graphics settings problems, and fixing damaged settings. The next Restart builds a new extensions cache.