Advice on partitioning HDD please

Hi Everyone.
This look sa really busy forum - great.
This week Im going to build my new PC and install Win7 64bit onto a new 500GB HDD. Ive built several PCs over the years - my first 386 in 1991 - but havent done it again since building my Barton Athlon. Its past its best and so im needing to start again and Im also keen to get to grips with Win7.
Any advice on partitioning ?
Ive previously (on my XPsystem) put system and program files into one partition and used to other partitions for my own data.
Im thinking that I probably only really need 2 partitions in total (C and D). How large would you recommend I make the C drive partition for win 7 64bit with MS Office & photoshop plus the usual extra stuff everybody seems to acquire.
I realise this is a bit a daft question (how long is a piece of string sort of question) but basically I dont want to make it too small but also dont want to have too much wasted space.

personaly if I read your drive compacity correctly Its' 500GB or less when formatted. I suggest slitting the drive equally into the same capacity.

However If one partition is for the main boot partition and the other is for a backup make the backup partition smaller of around 15GB-30GB for windows 7 Backup utility to run and save back ups.

and last if its one for the boot partition and one for Documents, Music, Photos and Videos make this one about 150 GB for your media and rest for windows partition.

Hope this is helpful.

Hi Jules59 - Welcome to w7forums

I'm currently running Windows 7 on a 25GB partition with a 400GB partition for data. Others may find this 25GB partition to be to abit small. Still yet I have all my things installed and still have 10GB free. As for any games that will use more than 1GB, I would install them to the data drive. For some reason I picture my computer running better if the Operating System partition is smaller. Less data to search through finding files needed to run.

The best answer for this question lies within your own XP computer. How much space was your XP system using after all applications was installed. Give yourself a little breathing room and make your decision based on how you configure Windows.

Hi Jules59

For your partitioning i would recommend Partition Wizard for Windows 7, supports 32/64 bit, this is one of the best freeware applications i have come across in years and i have used it on many many Computers in my work.

Link > http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-...n-manager.html

thanks everyone . cant wait for the parcels to arrive later this week. its xmas all over again !

As you can see I have two 500GB hard drives. After they're formatted the size is 465.76GB in size. Drive 0 is where I have my Windows 7 installed. You can see the 100MB MBR partition that Windows 7 automatically creates when installing the OS. I make my C drive a 64GB partition. The remainder of the hard drive is for miscellaneous stuff.

Here's a tip: To make a 64GB partition along with the 100MB MBR when installing Windows 7, make a partition size of 65,639 MB in size, then when Windows 7 makes the 100 MB MBR partition and the rest of the partition becomes a 64GB!

That may be bigger than what most recommend, but I like it that way. I have my Paging File on Drive 1, since I have learned that Windows likes the Paging File better when it's on a separate hard drive and a lot of experts recommend that type of setup.

I always change the drive letters to reflect that the CD/DVD drive is Drive D, since that has always been the traditional way of doing it by default. I suppose it really doesn't matter, but I guess I'm anal when it comes to that.