partition the hard drive???

Do you want to partition it for use with Windows or just to keep data on a different partition?

You can use Boot Camp Assistant to partition the drive without reformatting it, but if you want to start fresh you can use disk utility to do it also.

A lot of people think that their Macs will perform better if they do so, and that is an outdated notion. That is why I asked.

Like I said, you can use the Boot Camp Assistant to do it without formatting your drive. That seems to me to be the easiest way.

You can do as you please but I've not ever found any benefit to doing so. What I have found (and it's more pronounced on a "smaller" notebook drive) is that later down the road what you thought was the perfect scheme ends up not being so perfect and you need to change the partitions for whatever reason.

Yes, you can use the Boot Camp Assistant without installing Windows.

Boot Camp does a few things. It updates your Mac's firmware, it partitions the HD on the fly, and creates a Mac driver disk. After the assistant is complete, you can skip the installation of Windows and have a partitioned HD.

Frankly, I don't think it is worth the hassle. The Mac OS does a great job of keeping your data, programs, and the OS separate and there are very few things that could mess that up.

I wouldn't bother myself.

Hi bemap,

Personally, I think that if the hard drive fails, ALL partitions will fail. It's like people saving all their music to an external hard drive and backing up on it at the same time - both will go.

I think it's best to leave your hard drive as one partition and to buy a firewire or USB external hard drive from a company such as www.lacie.com or to do what I am going to do, which is to buy a new internal SATA drive and then put the old (current one) into an external enlosure.

If a drive stops working, it doesn't matter how many partitions it has - it will just die and everything is lost.

Just my 10 pence worth.

That's a good idea with a desktop computer with two physical hard drives, but not particularly beneficial with partitioning a single drive. OS X has an "archive and install" feature where you can usually reinstall the OS without losing your data.

What you should have for data safety is a way to back up your data. An external drive with backup software is the first thing you should consider for that purpose.

Yes:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

"This type of installation moves existing System files to a folder name Previous System, then installs a new copy of Mac OS X.

Archive and Install installations require the greatest amount of available disk space because you need to have room for your existing System and the new one you are installing. This is a good choice if you've already backed up your important files and are trying to resolve an existing issue."