I have been told by a friend that the best way to maximise the use of a large (say 20Gb) HD is to partion it into very small partions and that leaving a HD as one big partion mean that you lose quite a large chunk of the capacity of the drive. Is this correct? I have just ordered myself a new hard disk (IBM Deskstar 75GXP) which is quite big... 46.1Gb! I also have a 20.5Gb IBM drive which will run as a slave to the new drive. What I need is some advice as in what to do with both drives. 60.7Gb could be hard to partion couldn't it as there are only drive letters a: to x: ? I also need 2 drive letters for my CDROM and CD writer. Any advice on what is the best way to partion this lot would be gratefully recieved!... as I haven't got a clue where to start :-) Many thanks Stuart

See here: http://oakroadsystems.com/tech/hd-partn.htm Hard Disk Partitioning: Why and How http://www.powerquest.com/support/pm/pm1015.html Why Partition Your Hard Drive? http://www.maxtor.com/technology/ Maxtor Corporation - Technology Index

This has a lot to do with the system bios. If you have an older bios that limits max partitions to 8gb then you would lose 12gb with a single partition. I would suggest you put the 20gb drive in and determine how the bios sees it. If it sees the entire 20gb great, but I would still break it up into two 10gb drives. If the bios sees less capacity, then create partitions slightly less than its max capacity. You have 26 drive letters a - z (usable d - z). The multible partitions also give you a greater chance of data recovery in the event of a crash than with a single partition.

PARTITIONING: ...is done to increase file storage efficiency AND to better segregate/manage the files on your computer. The default nonmanagement system, typical of new computers, throws everything onto a unipartitioned hard drive. Any partition under 8 gigs, w/ FAT32, keeps increments of file storage down to 4k sectors. More compelling is the better management & performance achievable w/ partitioning. Here's where even experts (cordially) disagree as to the best approach. But here's mine: C drive (BOOT)... ...at 1-2 gigs, should only contain files required to operate the 'puter and all peripherals. Of course, it contains Windoze, drivers and all system/backup utilities. At smaller 1-2 gig size, frequent backup/imaging is more convenient and can support a wider range of backup devices. D drive (DUMY)... ...at 0.5-1 gig (FAT16 is fastest) D is used exclusively for virtual memory, temp folder, "temp inet files" and the like; in other words, garbage which you should never have to backup. Placing the windoze WIN386.SWP here, with equal min/max size on a freshly formatted D drive, will maximize performance. One can periodically reformat this drive w/o need for backup. E drive (EXES)... ...at up to 8 gigs, is your largest partition. Here is where you place all of your applications, Ofc Sts, maybe games,etc. Oh BTW, install all of your apps into a folder on root directory of E. For example, install M$ Office into maybe E:\MSOffice.2K. Note comformance to 8.3 file/folder naming convention. It's much better than than the default location of something silly like C:\Program Files\Microsoft\shared programs\Microsoft Office 2000. F drive (FILE)... ...this is where you direct saving of all files created within apps installed above. Redirect "C:\My Documents" to maybe F:\_MyFiles. You will likely want to also store your raw downloads into maybe F:\Dock. If you envision lord-knows-what additional OS's on your system, which may also want to read your saved files, consider FAT16 for more universal readability. However, such limits the size to 2 gigs. As this partition hosts files which you've spent considerable time on, frequent backup is recommended...but now easier. IN SUMMARY: Partitioning prepares you better for OS/hardware upgrades/expansion w/o having to regut everything and start from scratch. Backups are more bite-sized and system assumes snappier performance.

forget partitioning, i want to completely erase my hard drive, i mean everything, as though i just bought it from the store...i have linux and windows partitions overlapping, i want to start from scratch..Can anyone help me with this problem? is there a program or command to restore it without anything on it..its an ultra dma 8 gig....thank you

Just go to Fdisk and delete all active partions. All will be as new.

I am trying to do just that and it's not working for me. I keep getting the error that I can't delete an extended partition because it has logical drives (Which it doesn't) and my primary partition is only 23MB. I uninstalled Linux incorrectly (I think) and now I have six gigs sitting unusable and I can't delete the partition or format the drive because it's an extended partition from an os that doesn't exist anymore. AAAAGH!!