Dual Partitions for programs and data

You can make just about as many partitions as you like, and organize your hard drive lots of different ways.

One advantage of different partitions is that you can backup/restore one partition without affecting other partitions, which I think is what you are leading up to. For instance you could re-load your OS and programs anytime you want, without affecting your data. Another strategy is to occasionally copy an image of your OS partition to somewhere else on the hard drive, such as after you make setup changes or install software, then when you think you have a problem with the OS you can restore that image back to the OS partition. Don't have to reinstall and reconfigure apps that way.

You can buy programs such as partition magic that will take your current drive and break it up into multiple partitions without losing data.

You can do it during the windows install, personally I just set up an 80 GB partition for Windows and apps (mostly Office, MATLAB and games) and the other 920 GB goes to storage capacity.

All that follows should be do after backing up everything from your HD:

When the windows install program asks you to choose a hard drive to install select delete partition, then select create new partition, input the desired size and the install disk will format it and install windows, then in windows you can format the other partition by right clicking on it (you may have to go to disk management by right clicking on My Computer) and you'll be ready to go.

And yes, it's really good to be able to do a clean install of the OS without going through the hassle of backing up all your data.

What do you use this for exactly? Should have a 10GB partition for "windows swap file"?

I'm only going to have 320GB to deal with, so 80GB seems like a large portion. If I make the OS/programs partition smaller and run out of room, can I make it bigger without having to reformat the entire drive?

I do plan on getting an external enclosure for my 120GB. The 320GB is a Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS if anyone cares.

Dougx1317
Yes, by making a small (ie 60 gig) partition first for operating system and programs it will place and keep them on the outer edge of the platter where the angular velocity is much higher and a sector (512 Byts) occupies the same space.

In reference to my "D" drive for the swap file. By placing this NEXT to the "C" partician (Which I think 60 gigs is plenty - remember it is ONLY for operating system and Programs) it does two things. (1) windows normally sandwhichs this in your "C" drive. This file, unless you set min and max to the same value expands and contracts which leads to faster fragmentation. 2nd by making it your 2nd partition you keep it close to the outer edges of the platter(s) Windows writes from the outer edge toward the center.

(1) On a fresh installation - No Performace gains, over time, small. The best option is to put the swap file, in its own small partition on a second sata drive (On laptops, most one have one drive so not an option). On a one drive system, the only real benifit is from less fragmentation (over time). Visa does have a much better defrag program than XP.
NOTE: I have 4 drives (one pair raid 0 for xp pro, and the 2nd pair as raid 0 with vista on it.). The XP swap file is on the Vista Disk, and Vista's swap file is on the XP disk. Reason - the heads on one hard drive can not be at two places at the same time. so when a request is made to the swap file and to data (or program) it goes to one then the other. Where as on two HDDs you have two heads that can be at different places. Again only a small performance gain, but if you can you might as well take adantage of it.

(2) On size. Mine is over kill, 5 gig should be OK. The recommended size is 1 1/2 times your memory. In a x64 operating system with 6 -> 8 gigs of ram some set the swap file to a small value. I have 4 gigs of ram and I set my min and max size to 4 gigs ( could probably get by with less). Didn't catch if your vista was 32 bit or 64 bit. If 32 Bit you probably only have around 2.8 gigs of Ram (give or take 0.4 gigs) available for programs so I think 3 to 4 gig swap file would be good. So you could cut that 10 gig down to say 5 gigs. Remember, the space on the hard drive will be used weather its on C drive, or in its own partition.

With one HDD, the gain under vista64 would be very small.
I have XP loaded here are the procedures
Control Panel -> System Properties Select advanced
Under performance Click Settings, Select Advanced
Under Virtual Memory select change.
This brings up page were yo can select Logical drive to hold Swap file and if you select custom you can set the min/max size.

For vista, select help and type in virtual memory. Probably very close to XP
Might be a good idea if you google vista virtual memory settings as I have no experience with x64.

Repeat, one a one drive laptop, the performance gain probably isn't worth the hassle. Take care and great computing on that laptop