Partition 640gb drive... or not???
 

In a few days I'll be building my system.
I'm getting a WD 640gb hard drive and wondering if I should partition it.
I've never done it before so I don't really know what to do, or how much space each partition should get.

If your gonna use it for your operating system I'd say partition it. A small partition for the OS, prolly 20g for XP and 50g for vista... If you keep all your docs, programs and pagefile off the C drive you can get away with smaller than that but it can be a pain to manage. ( Mine are 10g for XP and 30 for Vista)
This also allows you to make backup images of your system.

You get the option of selecting the size of your partition during your windows install..
What OS are you using?

Partitioning is really easy. You can do it when you install a fresh copy of Windows. When you install Windows it asks you to create a partition on a raw disk. Select the size you you deem appropriate. Personally, I make my OS partition twice as big as it needs to be (so after installing all your programs you need, etc., I still have 50% of the partition available to be used). You can also make more partitions at that time too, but you can also do it in Disk Management after installing Windows.

Hope that helps.

I'll be using Vista Home Premium 64bit.

50gig should be ok?
Then what do I put on that, just Vista? Or Vista and other programs?
I've seen people talking about using lots of partitions... one for OS, one for programs, one for pagefile, one for music... ect. That sounds like too much to me.

Sorry guys, I've never done this before.
I'm trying to get myself ready.

i still recommend you to use 100gb or more because game and multimedia software (ps, maxstudio,etc) will take lots of resource and space... if you are lazy to clean up...

100gig for OS and Programs... that much?
I guess that would be fine.

What about when I can afford more storage?
Should I think about getting a small drive just for OS and crap?
640gig internal would be enough for data probably, and I'll be looking into external storage too.

not necessary... i mean... mine is 20gb for vista, 10 for program including games (abode ps3, office, age3 and halo pc)... but in future game might require more than 8 gb to install... think about if you install more than 4 new game... same for newer big software...

yes 640 would be fine...

Just remember if you let your c: drive get too big you won't be able to back it up. I'd keep it to under 50g and install anything big on d:
Remember Vista itself gets pretty big, my Ultimate 64 C:\Windows folder is 17g as we speak.

I'll probably go with 50gig... or maybe 40.

Is it worth it to make a seperate partition for games/big programs?
I'm guessing most software will go on the partition with the OS, but you say install anything big on D:... how big is big? I'm just not sure exactly what to do here. How to choose what goes where?

The computer I'm on now is not mine.
On C: there's 30.6gig (Os, programs, data, ect...).
On D: there's 6.59gig (Recovery, Temp, User).
It's a Compaq...

After so many years on crappy hardware I'm a little lost when it comes to some things.