installing os question

skives

I built my own pc and I am buying Vista Ultimate tomorrow. Is it a good idea to install it on its own partition?

sprkymrk

That's a very good question, and not strictly a "Vista" one either.

It's always a good idea to install the OS to it's own partition and store data (My Docs, etc.) on another. Many linux/unix OS's do that by default during installation - the setup portion will present you with a partition layout it recommends or let you choose your own. As a matter of fact, in linux even the swap file is it's own partition and file system. That can help with speed if it's actually on a seperate physical disk, or at least keep fragmentation down even if it's only a different partition. Windows will let you move the swap file off the system partition afterwards, but not during the install.