partitions and hard drive life?

I'm no expert on this, but my layman's understanding of partitions is that that, if anything, they INCREASE the performance of a drive, because smaller partitions encourage more efficient cluster usage by the drive. Other more technically-minded members may know otherwise! What I CAN say, with absolute certainty is that I have never ever heard of a HDD losing performance or lifespan as a consequence of partitioning. When it's your time to kick the bucket, you kick the bucket, regardless of how segregated and organised your life is! ;) Arky ;o)

lol good explanation! so the "partitions" get less fragmented , because theres less places to point to the data? does that make sence ?

Hmmm. Yes, currently 2 of my HDDS are IBMs. I have heard both good and bad about IBM HDDs. They used to have a bulletproof reputation. I was told by a shop owner in Nottingham the other day that Western Digital are the current leaders in HDD technology and reliablity. Since my primary HDD is a W-D, I will no doubt (eventually) find out which manufacturer makes the best drives! I do hope this isn't for a very long time yet, though. Even with DVD-R, I have way too much data to make full backing up of my harddrives a practical reality :( Arky ;o)

lol i see good luck, well i thought my fujitsu was good , it was REALY fast to , but then nothing. Nottngiham? lets just say nottingham city centre isnt to far away from my house ;) i hear seagate is a godo make ( my curent drive) fingers crossed.

I've had one WD and one Maxtor drive failing so far. Right now I'm running 2 WD 60Gig (5400 rpm) and two IBM Deskstar 120Gig (7200 rpm) without any problems. However I learned from the past and my drives are now vibration-free (as good as I can do that) and they have very good cooling. I think the problems with IBM were only with one special series of Deskstars (the 60-75Gig, I believe) - before that IBM had always had the reputation of making much more reliable drives than their competitors.