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Since 120Gb should be enough, send me the other one

Personally, I wouldn't partition it at all. Too much of a hassle, and I don't think you can remove the partitions and create one big one without reformatting

I would install FS2004 first, but that's just me

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I have Partition Magic 8 to do this (it said on the tin it was easy ???) as I had heard that a partition can increase performance or at least prevent deteriation of performance.  It says "Create, resize, copy, move, convert, split and merge partitions safely" we shall see!

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Ah! I have the answer! If I partition it into segments as I plan to I can defrag each partition at a time! At least thats what I think I can do If a partition is what  I thought a partition is!

Time to change my sig!

Well its come (sort of!)

It looks pretty impressive and doesn't make a noise! Unfortunately the forgot to put in my second hard drive ??? They are going to send an engineer to put it in though! (Too right you are!!)

So my Parition operation is on hold! Everything except that looks to be excellent so its a shame they messed up on that - as long as they sort it promptly I wont be too angry!

I think ill put one partition temporarilly in the single Drive for now so I can put programs and Flightsim on in a partition....

I've also got to figure out the ATi Driver install system - can anybody talk me through it? The system has come with 3.8 catalyst drivers.

I think for now I shall just sit back and watch the screensaver......

You can easily tweak Win XP to look and behave just like Win'98 etc. But.... you have to figure out where the settings are, quite a daunting task the first time.

Backing up before partitioning is a wise move, I've had data corruption during partitioning operations.

Partitioning is a great idea. You can load Win'98 or ME on the C: partition and XP on D: until you get the hang of XP. (dual boot with 2 operating systems)

I partition my 80 gig drives into 6 partitions, makes defragging a fast job, so you tend to do it more.

I use the partitions as folders basically, I use an entire partition for CFS2, another for FS2002 and FS9,  I have a general games partition, a working partition, a SAFE drive, (where I keep all things important) and then my XP operating system sits on a 8gig partition (half used now.)

I got the hang of XP after a while and never used my Dual boot system for 98 anymore, so I just install XP now on C: drive.

A good way to partition a new drive is simply to load a startup disk in and type fdisk at the command prompt. This invokes the default partitioning program and it's easy enough to use. The use of fdisk will destroy all data on the drive.

If you have two 120gb drives, cut them up into roughly 40gb partitions. Your operating system will need to be at least 6gig, but I recommend 10, unless you plan on installing everything  to C: drive, in which case make it 40gig.

Your largest partition needs to hold your largest folder,(Music?) with a good measure of thought put in about the future size. It's better to have more gigs than to run short.

I made my FS2002 - FS9 partition too small, and it's not going to last me this year. (another drive in the pipeline)

You may not need all the space just now... (240gig!), so after you are happy with your new rig and all is working properly, you could do a copy the whole first drive to the second one to use as a failsafe backup until you need the space! If you do that, unplug the power connector on the backup to save wear on the drive.

Also, you need to do the copy as a drive image or use a third disk/pc to run the op sys so you can direct copy from one drive to the other. (your main drive can't be the active boot drive for a direct copy.)

If you do a copy rather than an image, you need to copy each partitions contents to the corresponding partition on the second drive. (at least the op sys or c: partition).

I'm glad you got your partitions sorted.

The joystick has a serial connection?? Sure it's not a gameport connector? At any rate, I think your up for a new joystick, unless you install a soundcard that has a gameport connector, which is easy enough to do.

On the XP machine, run the network setup wizard, consider the XP machine to be the main PC on the network, and it needs to be the one with the internet connection if your using ICS.

Run the network connection wizard on ME on the other pc.

There is detailed info on networking in Help, but I found it difficult to use.

You will need to find out why you dont have a windows disk and get one. period.

I suppose it's another prepack system with a system restore disk..........