   windows xp and hard drives
  Hey, A few friends of mine who are quite knowledgable in computers have told me that windows xp screws up your hard drive.  I didnt exactly ask for the specifics of how this happens but I do think they know what they are talking about.  Also another friend (who has a BSc in comp science) told me that windows cannot handle a large hard drive well it is better to have windows on its own 4-6 gb partition.  I just want to know if any of you can confirm that there is any truth to this.  Thanks.   ,Matt-= kill one your a murderer, kill thousands your a conquerer =- 
  Ok, what Windows XP does to your hard disk, other than installing windows XP, is installing NTLDR on the MBR, which will load XP, or any other OS you place into there(I have placed linux in NTLDR before). As for screwing up hard disks, it doesn''t really if you set it up correctly. As for Windows not being able to handle large disks correctly, that may be the case with Fat32, but NTFS is a lot better at dealing with large partitions than not. Although it does lead to much better performance overall if you place Windows on its own partition as your friend describes, because it allows for windows stuff to be found a lot faster, because it doesn''t have to seek through a bunch of media files, or programs, or games. Then give the rest of the disk to whatever you want, you can have that even as a singular NTFS partition, which would be optimal.  