Should I partition my new hard drive before a clean install of Vista?
You’re better off just backing up your data regularly than partitioning your hard drive for this purpose. The only good reason to partition drives nowadays, in my opinion, is if you plan to run more than one operating system on your computer and you need different file formats. Otherwise, you’re just making life more difficult for yourself unnecessarily. Don’t do it. That’s just my opinion, but I’ve had a lot of experience with this and I’ve always found that dealing with multiple drive letters is a pain. There are arguments to the contrary. Your friend’s is one, which is you’re protecting your data. Maybe, but if you’re going to be doing regular backups anyway, then it’s a moot point. Another is that you may speed performance. Possibly, but today’s drives are so fast that you’re probably not going to notice any improvement. Another would be that it simplifies backups because you’d normally only want to backup data and not programs. Possibly, but as long as you organize your data into
Before you install an OS, you’ll definitely want to either partition your hard drive or back it up. Partition is more common simply because it is cheaper. Consider that Vista is a relatively new operating system. There are many things that could go wrong with it, simply because it hasn’t been tested in as many different situations as many other systems. If your system crashes, and you haven’t backed it up, you’ll spend a very long time tracking down all the programs you had. In addition some very useful programs simply don’t make money, and may be removed from the market, because they only have a niche audience. You may lose a program, and not be able to find it again. Also, backing up your current OS will save you many headaches. If Vista crashes, unless you have you install disc for whatever you’re currently using or you’ve backed it up, you’re out of luck. Microsoft won’t send you a free XP disc, so you can either wait until Vista is fixed for you, or pay a pretty penny for somethin
