How do you create a partition in Windows? Do I need special software i.e. Partition Magic, or is it different as the drive is empty/new? I am pretty confident with windows, but last time I added a drive was using windows 95, probably about 6-7 years ago!

Bit of a weird question, but can you only use the partitioned parts of drives, or can you use the outside unpartitioned part as well? Schematically, if the whole drive is a big square, and a partition is a small square inside it, can you only store data in the little squares, or in the area in the big square as well as the little squares? Think that was the kind of question that needs a drawing!

When you say FAT, do you mean FAT16 or FAT32? If FAT, then that restricts the size of the partition doesn't it?

I am probably going to buy a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80Gb drive, as they seem pretty cheap for the size.

Currently under windows I can just see the c:\ drive, formatted as NTFS.

Thanks for all your time, it's hard trying to get to grips with all this!

Rich