Richard, you need to be careful with the partitions--how many of them are going to be bootable? (Are you doing a single platform? Then as long as one can reach the right area you're fine. But don't make that first one too big if you want a second operating system to work in there. Partition Magic will spell it out for you.)

I think this is important to what you are doing: the following is a statement in the instructions for the Seagate 300gig drive I put in the kids' computer last week. I'm sure they have the drivers to run a large partition, but I didn't want to fool with the research so for now they're operating on one 137gig partition. Also, what type of hard drive did you have and did you replace it with? The following is a SATA drive (Serial ATA).

Caution. You will lose data if you format your Serial ATA interface drive beyond the 137-Gbyte barrier on a system that does not meet requirements described in this appendix. . .

Most OEM motherboards that support Serial ATA provide disc-device drivers that are optimized for that system. These drivers should support capacities higher than 137 Gbytes. See your system documentation for specifics and to check for driver updates.

You need to do two things: look up your particular computer make and model and see what the specs are. They'll tell you the largest drive you can install in that system. And you need to find out what barriers exist. And if you can correct them with new cards or upgraded software.

SRS