Partitioning a 500GB HD?

Yes

Yes, provided that there is unallocated space remaining on the drive in which case the method I described using Disk Management holds.

If at some time in the future you want to resize existing partitions this cannot be done through Windows and requires the use of third party software such as Acronis Disk Director or Partition Magic.

F:\ is likely to be another Service Partition - may contain diagnostics - these are often FAT, why I don't know. No doubt Gateway have their reasons. What is in it?

D:\ is the Recovery partition for the OS - again I have no idea how Gateway set up their computers - I build my own although I do have an HP Vista Business box which I bought to evaluate Vista (could not have built one as cheaply), but rarely use. On that all 3 factory made partitions - the main OS, Recovery and Tools partitions are NTFS. Gateway clearly do things differently.

As a footnote I have visited California and the South western USA on 7 occasions (1996 - 2001) for the purposes of photography - I am a landscape photographer. The nearest I got to your location was SF from where we travelled down Highway 1 by the Big Sur to St Luis Obispo before heading across to Death Valley, Yosemite etc. Family problems then intervened, but I am returning to the States this September - Colorado Rockies - again purely for photography.

See my website if you are interested Left click on PeteC to the left of my posts and on Visit PeteC's Homepage. Enjoy

 

When you first format a drive the whole lot, bar a little for the file system is Unallocated Space - During the install procedure you create a partition for the operating system as I described - if you choose to make a partition smaller than the max space available the unused space is seen as Unallocared in Disk Management. So no action is required on your part to make/save unallocated space when you are starting out on a clean drive.

Oh Yes 1996 - after a day of mist - usual for the Big Sur I'm told, the sun finally appeared there. Have a number of colour slides packed away somewhere, but no mono's - not a really suitable subject.

The majority of the images on my site are scans from wet darkroom prints - some of the later ones are digital, scanned from slides or mono negs - a few are from digital capture. This upcoming trip will be the first on which I have taken my digital SLRs to the USA.

Don't do your pictures down, I take hundreds of record shots too, but also seek high quality shots for exhibiting in Salons all over the world. The shot of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands was taken at around 5 am as the sun rose.

 

Can only think that the disk is maybe dirty or damaged, but if that is the case surprised that the OS loaded at all.

You are looking under - right click drive in Windows Explorer > Properties > Tools?

 

Chas

Please confirm ....

Start > Programs > Accessories > Windows Explorer - yes or no?

Start > Run > type in explorer.exe > Enter - result??

 

Take your pick from here ....
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLG_en___GB227&q=xp+run+commands

but that is not a solution - I suggest you run a repair of that XP install.

 

I have not forgotten you - busy on other matters at present.

 

What further detail do you want?

Photoshop uses it's own pagefile (virtual memory) and does not make use of the Windows pagefile.. As installed Windows manages the size of the page file which expands and contracts between set limits according to the demands made on it. This can lead to fragmentation of the pagefile - it is better IMO to make use of a fixed size pagefile which remains contiguous and does not get scattered around the drive. The standard fixed size is 1.5x installed RAM although it is unlikely that Windows will ever use that much especially if there is a decent amount of RAM installed (512 MB absolute minimum, 1 Gb preferred, or more depending on the apps installed); however with a large drive space should not be at a premium. The Photoshop aspect is irrelevant if you don't use the program.

Operationally not really - it's no more secure if the drive suffers a failure. In terms of ease of use I think so, but each to his/her own. I find it far easier to switch to another drive in Explorer than scroll through a whole list of folders - and I must have several thousand on my computer.

I can only give you a general recommendation - only you know how much data you have and the rate at which specific data is likely to increase in the future. You now have a much larger drive - 750 Gb vs 500 Gb

OS Partition 30 Gb
Music, Photos, Data, Docs - 3 > 4 x the current size of your current data with no partition less than 50 Gb

The above uses <1/3 of the drive space - I would make an additional spare partition of, say 50 Gb and leave the rest of the drive as Unallocated Space and available for the creation of more partitions on the future using Windows to create. If you partition the whole drive and later want to change the partition sizes or merge two partitions or split a partition into 2 you will need third party software. It is possible in Windows by deleting and remaking partitions, but they need to be empty to avoid data loss. Third party software can resize/split partitions containng data without data loss, although a backup of the data is always recommended before working on the partitions.

Don't get paranoid about partitioning the drive - assess the opinions expressed, make your own decisions and if they turn out to be less than optimum put it down to experience - it's all part of the learning curve. There is no one solution to suit everyone - it's your specific requirements that you need to analyse.

Bottom line - partition size is up to you based on your perceived usage and rate of accumulation of data. What looks oversize today may well be getting cramped next year.