Partitioning 40gig drive for XP - advice?

Hey there. I have a 40gig UDMA Hard disk, and am looking to upgrade my rig to XP Professional, clean format. I'm a bit of a novice - never partitioned my drive before, but I've heard it's worthwhile. So I have some questions-

1) What program should I use to partition the drive? FDisk?
2) What are the pros and cons of partitioning the drive?
3) How large should each of the partitions be?
4) Are there any walkthrough guides out there?
5) How do I perform a low-level format of my existing drive?
6) Any additional tips/advice I need before I do this?

Cheers

Angyman.

Partitioning

1. Fdisk if you only want Fat32 partitions or WinXP has its own partition utility during the install process for Fat and NTFS partitions.

2. Mostly organization. You can keep installers/drivers/games&programs/media files on separate partitions from the OS, and if you ever need to format the OS and reinstall, the data on the other partitions will still be there. Fat32 stores data more efficiently on small partitions than large partitions. The OS is faster if it's on the 1st partition because disks read faster at the beginning of the drive, and data can't get fragmented across the whole drive, only across the partition its in- meaning less seek time associated with fragmentation.

3. 5-10GB for the OS. The rest are up to you. I wouldn't make any Fat32 partition larger than 16Gb though for storage efficiency.

4. Yes. Search on Google.

5. By downloading the manufacturer's software from their website and running it. It's not needed unless the drive is really starting to mess up, and even then it may not help.

6. Read up on NTFS and Fat and decide which you like, or try both. These forums are a great resource, so post back if you need any help or have more questions.

In addition to Arkaine23's suggestions, there's an excellent article at the MSKB on partitioning and formatting your HDD (using the Fdisk and Format tools)...and also how to use XP Setup to do the same:

HOW TO: Partition and Format a Hard Disk in Windows XP

Cheers Arkaine, redduc. So far I'm thinking of:

Partition 1: 8 gig - OS.
Partition 2: 10 gig
Partition 3: 10 gig
Partition 4: 12 gig

2,3,4 to be shared between games, apps, documents and media as I see fit. Does that sound plausible?

What about the cons of partitioning the drive? A mate has mentioned that it actually slows down disk access times, for example, if you run a game on partition 3, the time it takes communicating with your OS on partition 1 slows down the access times slightly. Of course, he's no expert, so I'm wondering whether he's accurate or not. Opinions?

As for Fat32 or NTFS filing systems, I'm going to read up on the differences again. The partitions I've selected so far have all been for Fat32 systems, as that is what I am used to btw (Win ME presently).

Thanks again, any more tips/comments and input is much appreciated!

Angyman.

[edited typos- doh! ]

Update: Prolly going to use NTFS, seeing as there doesn't seem to be any real con for doing so. Those partition sizes still a good idea?

partitioning

I'm not 100% sure, but I think NTFS uses a fixed cluster size... meaning that unlike Fat32, the size of the partitions has nothing to do with how efficiently they store data. You may find you only want 2 or 3. But its just a matter of preference. I don't think there's any way for you to notice such small performance differences as those caused by various styles of partitioning.

A 40Gb drive will likely actually be more like 38Gb once you get to formatting and partitioning it up, just so you know.

Oh, and your swap file will be on your OS partition unless you move it, so always keep at least a couple hundred MB free on C:

alittle thing i like to do with partitions. I use 1 HD or in ur case 1 partition for the sole purpose of Downloading. I download alot and most the time delete 80% of what i download. so u see that partition will get fragmented like crazy real fast. thats the purpose of using 1 partition or 1 hd as just a download partition. that way u can keep ur C drive very clean and not fragmented. same with my data partitions that i keep permanently. So once i decide if i want to keep my downloaded file, i will move it to my other partitions. Although this may not seem like a big deal, it will save u from having to run Defragmentor every month.