To Partition or not?

I have ordered a new hard drive and am now wondering if I should partition it or not. What advantages are there. I only intend to have one operating system. Win XP Pro.

I was thinking about this the other day; I was considering making a small 1 gig partition that I could use for burning CD's. That way, the space doesn't get fragmented and you reduce the chance of burning a coaster (which I've had problems with lately in Win98, since I hate defragmenting). Other than that, partitions are a pain to me, I say just go with one big one and be done with it.

Also while you are at it, make sure you give your CDROM a high drive letter (I like to use X) that way if you decide to partition later, you won't screw up any of your programs that are dependent on the CDROM drive.

Agree with MacGyver about partition for burning CDs. About the rest - all depends on what are You going to do with Your PC.
For storing MP3s,video etc it should be large enough partition.
About file system - if You're going to use FAT32 - do not use partitions larger than 8Gig - You'll loose one only advantage of FAT32 - small (4Kb) claster's size. With partition 8gig < X < 16gig it will be 8Kb per claster,16Gig < X < 32Gig it wil be 16kb, and so on. Go figure.
If You're going to use NTFS - no problem - it can be as big partition as You want. But, anyways, I would recommend to store important data separately from system files and applications/games.
My two cents... ;)

Thanks Guys I will be using FAT32. I did see a suggestion somewhere that it was advisable to have a partition to keep all the installed program files in. Does this make sense?

That's pretty much what I do. I find it convenient to have a sub-8G primary partition for the system & applications, to get 4K clusters, and for easier maintenance. Then any remaining partitions for data, under 32G to stay under the 32K cluster breakpoint. Although if you're using a lot of large data files, eg .WAV audio or video, you're not going to lose much with 32K clusters. Also, with modern systems speed and memory, the huge FAT's that VFAT is having to deal with aren't a serious drain on the system performance. FAT32 was designed when an average computer was probably a P166 with 16M.

agree with everyone here. I either have 2 installed drives or 1 drive with at least 2 partitions. I keep my documents, email, and mp3s jpegs etc on the d: drive or 2nd partition
and I also keep a ghost image, so if things go bad, I just reghost and lose nothing. I take my ghost image just after a fresh format and install with all my usual stuff installed and running good. Saves a ton of time and headaches.

The added convienance of a second partition is handy. It doesnt have to be a huge chunk of your main HD but big enough not to run out of space. I mainly use mine as a driver, docs, cabs, and email storage for when I have to format my main drive. I have a 1.5G out of my 40G and it is more than enough.

JM2¢

one for windows one for apps and games and
one for dvd ripping, cd burning etc

My desktop has 4 physical drives, but only 3 "Drive" letters..

Basicaly, i raid(0) my two 20 gigs, I cut of a 10 gig section and mirrored - raid(1)it to a physical 10 gig drive, then a have a 27 gig with my second OS.

Basicly, anything i want to keep, i dump to the 10 gig mirror. I don't need to worry about backing up, etc.. From time to time i'll burn stuff, but that is more for space considerations.

[quote]Originally posted by Ruslan:
<strong>...About file system - if You're going to use FAT32 - do not use partitions larger than 8Gig - You'll loose one only advantage of FAT32 - small (4Kb) claster's size. With partition 8gig < X < 16gig it will be 8Kb per claster,16Gig < X < 32Gig it wil be 16kb, and so on. Go figure....My two cents... ;) </strong><hr></blockquote>

For saving disk space yes, but game freaks want big clusters, less fat entries as all those little windows files (how many thousand??) won't have two or three entries each with a big cluster size, usually we are talking about big HDs so whats a few wasted k of disk space between friends....

& that's my two cents... ;)