Should windows 7 have its own partition

[coj]

Hello,

When installing a new OS into a new system...is it necessary or recommended to have the OS in it's own partition if you only have one hard drive?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Not really necessary any more. Some people still do, but I've yet to see any noticeable performance benefit from doing it that way as opposed to leaving everything on one drive.

 

[WR2]

With only 1 hard drive it's not really necessary to go to the trouble of having a separate partition for the OS.
On older, slower hard drives you could sometimes get a worthwhile performance benefit using partitions. With faster drives and larger cache sizes on the new hard drives you don't really need to bother.