Rad
I read your great article on partitioning. It was very informative and well written.

I wanted to know what would be the best way to deal with my laptop computer that is going to be delivered to me soon from Dell.  

I have Vista Ultimate on it. I believe that partioning will be good. The drive is 320 gb. So everything Dell loads will also be on it ( I did not add any software) . Should I just do the partition thru Vista or do I need to re-format and start from scratch? Will the operating system all ready occupy the out edge of the disk?

I design and thought I would put Vista on 1 drive and my program on another and the files on a third. 

Is this a good approach or am I way off base? 

Do you or anyone else have an info or an article on this?

I hope you have a moment to help me. Any wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You  

TP, a new Dell laptop with Vista will typically come already partitioned in a manner that is not easy to work with.  See this thread for an explanation of Dell's partition layout.  You'll likely have four partitions already, including an extended partition at the end with a single logical partition in it.

It is possible to split the Vista (C:) partition to give data its own partition.  You need to shrink partition #3 (Vista) to create unallocated space between it and partition #4 (extended), then expand the front end of the extended partition to bring the unallocated space inside the extended partition, and then you can create one or more logical partitions out of that unallocated space.  That's right--it's rather involved.

Forget using Vista's built-in partitioning program.  It's buggy and not up to this kind of complex task.  You need a good partitioner.  Unfortunately, the venerable Partition Magic won't do it, either, so forget using that.  It can only handle legacy style cylinder-aligned partitions, whereas Dell uses 2048-aligned partitions on their Vista machines.  I'd likewise be leery of most other popular partitioners unless you know for certain they've been updated to work with 2048-aligned partitions.  (Note: I wouldn't rely on claims of "Vista compatibility" because Vista technically doesn't require 2048-aligned partitions, so a utility could be compatible with Vista without being compatible with 2048-aligned partitions.)

Two partitioners known to work are BootIt-NG and Acronis Disk Director 10.  (I only use BootIt-NG, but I know Brian has experience with both.)

I wouldn't worry about the physical location of the OS partition.  Even though Dell puts it in partition #3, it's still only about 10 GB from the front of the disk, and on a 320 GB hard disk that still qualifies as being on the "outer tracks".

The difficulty of working around Dell's preinstalled partitions is one reason many people opt to just nuke the whole thing and start over, doing a clean install of Vista with a fresh partition layout.

Be forewarned that some people have reported that removing the MediaDirect partition and then pressing the MediaDirect button on the laptop causes recurring boot problems.  I don't use MD so haven't investigated why that might occur, but before nuking the MD partition I'd recommend doing your homework to check how people have resolved that problem.  (It might only be if you leave the existing Vista OS partition intact... but again, i don't use MD so haven't paid attention to the details.)

TP,

You don't have to install BING. When it asks whether you want to install, press Cancel or whatever. You then run BING from the boot disc.

Well I am anxious and at it again Brian. My C drive (Vista Ultimate) Has 292357 MB allocated to it. Do you have a suggestion to how much I can take and put in MBR entry 3 partition?

TP,

This is a screen capture of Partition Work from my test computer.

Brian; Back at it. I had allready done some work on it so here is the results. I still think I may have to much on the OS but I really don't know what to do with all this space.

DELL UTILITY- O  PARTITION     86 MB  DELL UTILITY
RECOVERY-1       PARTITION      99994 MB HPFS/NTFS
OS-2                  PARTITION     10240 MB  HPFS/NTFS
MBR ENTRY         PARTITION     194923 MB EXTENDED
     FILES A         VOLUME         49999 MB  HPFS/NTFS
   PROG B            VOLUME        49999 MB   HPFS/NTFS
-----------            VOLUME         923363 MB  FREE SPACE
UNNAMED           VOLUME          2559 TYPE DDh/221
----------              PARTITION          1 MB  FREE SPACE

Don't know where that last 1 mb came from.   

Thanks Brian for all your help. I really appreciate it. I did do a typo on that one. I think I will put less in the OS only with the thought that it will take less time to defrag later on.

Thanks again