partition or not

[jman1980]

i recently had to formatt my harddrive. i have read pros and cons of partitions. i have an 80gig drive and want to set it up to be as effecient as possible. i am only running 1 os. any thoughts would be appreciated as if i reformatt now i wouldnt be loosing much.
thanks



winxp home
1.8ghz cpu
80gig ultra hd
512mhz mem
geforce4 ti4600 agp

['Eminence Grise]

I always partition because if I have to reinstall my operating system I still have all of my data on a separate partition that's untouched by the reinstall. I also like my music on a separate partition from all others and I keep a small partition for backing up really important things. My os and programs go on the c: then data on D: then music on f: then backups on g:. It works well for me.

[dAm]

I have a 60gb I split into two partitions simply because I wanted the second partition to save games, data, etc to so it wouldn't be lost if C: crashed and I had to format. May not be foolproof because the entire drive could always die but it's worked out good so far. I also have a small 8gb as a slave for things I really don't want to lose but haven't burned to cd yet. That's also where I store my Ghost image of C:.

[jman1980]

ok, so a small (2mg) primary with fat 32 and then maybe a couple of partitions ntfs with the rest of the drive might suffice? you have to forgive my ignorance, but i can install the os on say whatever label i give the first partition and then install games and such on the other? what about making them logical? so many questions.