Just got my new Dell XPS Gen2 laptop. I will wipe the drive clean to get rid of the bloat-ware, and re-install my stuff.I just want some feed back if you use windows to create the partitions during install or do you use some type of software?I have looked at some that are out there but, no opinion on them.Also, what size did you create for your operating system partition?Maybe you could share how you have your drive set-up partition wise to give me some ideas.Thanks,J

If you just want to wipe everything and install clean you don't need any particular partition utility. The advantage such a utility offers is the ability to resize and move partitions on the fly without having to erase the data (most of the time!).Just run the Windows setup, erase the old partitions and create a system partition (or allocate the entire drive). Once Windows is installed, you can create additional partitions via Disk Management (click Start-Run, type "diskmgmt.msc").On my 74GB Raptor I have a 12GB system partition and the rest for installing programs and games. The other drivers are partitioned so as to keep thing organized, ie. I have one partition for sceneries, one for music and videos etc...this is really only useful if you have Partition Magic since you can't resize the partitions otherwise. One big partition would actually work just as well.

4 drives; 40, 80, 120 and 250 GB each drive contains only one partition. the 250 is external and used for backup, the 120 contains the OS, Office, and MS games, the 80 mostly other games, and the 40 FS scenery. in the past i used partitions in fact there was no choise as the old OS would not see drives more thasn 2gig, but now there is no problem with bigger drives, there is a problem with drives over 160 for some motherboards but this should be fixable with a BIOS flash. AFAIK even drives of over a terrabyte should be no problem. with modern systems is there anything to be gained from partitioning the drives? this is something i would consider before ding it. there are many reasons for not doing it, just say i had decided to make a 40 gig partition exclsivly for FS as many would possibly recomend, well if i had i would have run out of spaces ages ago, even compressing the files and moving all possible files to a different folder my FS9 folder is over 50 gig. when i used seperate partitions i nver found any advantage over not havig them.

Thanks alot for your imput.I was unaware that I could add partitions via "run". Thanks. Will do that after the os is completely up to date installed.I had not partitioned my other laptop and want to do it on this one.So do you just put windows os on one partition by itself? I think this is what you are saying. Does this enable you to do a fresh install of windows without disturbing the other programs? This would be great. Do you have a suggested partition size for the OS?I own 2 businesses and need some of my business software installed, FS & maybe a couple other games for those away trips. So I am thinking maybe 4 partitions?Thanks again.J

In the event of a drive failure does partitioning help retrieve things from a undamaged area?I am just trying to make it safer, not make it more troublesome.Thanks,J

In the event of a hardware failure it wouldn't matter as the data would be physically damaged. Against things like viruses or file corruption it might help but NTFS is quite secure so that shouldn't be a real problem.Another problem with having huge 250GB partitions is that it's impossible to defrag in any reasonable amount of time. With a small OS partition I can defrag the system files frequently and quickly to keep boot times down and Windows performance up. The partitions used for storage of various data do need need to be defragged as frequently."just say i had decided to make a 40 gig partition exclsivly for FS as many would possibly recomend, well if i had i would have run out of spaces ages ago"That's where Partition Magic comes in :) You'd just increase the size of the partition.

last time i had to retrieve stuff from a damaged drive was a few year ago and it as not partitioned and i got enough stuff off by slaving it after installing the OS on a new drive. in my experience when a drive starts losing clusters they are loast all over the drive and no partition is safe. one advantage to partitioning could be that it allows the partition with the OS to be installed without touching the other drives/programs, but with XP it this is not nessessary. also most programs now rely on rgisry entries and files in the OS so will not run properly unless re-installed.

So it seems like I will just go as I usually do, 1 hard drive, 1 partition.I do not see any advantages then in multi-partitions.J