I am a big fan of partitioning drives. I really like to have my operating system and programs on one drive and all of my data on another. I do this because it makes backing up faster and easier and setting up a new computer with my old data is a snap. Along the way I have learned to move my Outlook profiles (very important) as well as pointing My Documents and now the new User account setup in Vista to my data drive. One thing I had never done until now though was to move my FireFox profile out of its default location onto my data drive. A quick Google search produced easy step by step instructions direct from Mozilla. Your Mozilla profile contains all your personal data such as bookmarks, passwords, browsing history etc.

If you are interested in how to setup XP or how to setup Vista with partitioned drives I highly recommend getting started with the steps provided on the Tweakhound web site.

One last recommendation, make sure to save any program setup files you download or purchase on your data drive so that when you setup a new computer you can quickly install your old software once you move over your data with a quick copy and paste.