Hey there mantovibe, I¹ve worked with the Mac since the late 80s and have done everything except made a fishbowl out of my old Mac Plus. Seriously, regarding partitioning, there are benefits to partitioning if you use your Mac in ways that can benefit from it. I guess that means audio and video people. Specifically, I¹ve been told that journaling slows things down for folks who work with video and audio. So there would be an advantage to having a partition formatted with journaling turned off. Be careful here... my experience has been that once journaling is turned on, it cannot be turned off. The drag with partitioning is that you¹ve got to crystal-ball your needs into the future. If you need to change your partition sizes, you¹ll have to move all your stuff to another drive, re-partition and then move everything back after re-partitioning ­a whole afternoon¹s work. There is something out there that let¹s you resize partitions, I forget its name. As I¹ve never used it, I cannot speak to its reliability. It does sound like something I¹d use only after a full-volume backup anyway. If your Mac is a tower, you¹d be better served by installing a 2nd drive (with a high platter speed ­ i.e. high performance drive), especially if you¹re audio is coming in via FireWire. Dedicate this drive to audio and video and keep journaling off on this drive. Now your main drive has your OS, all your apps, and other data (email, WP, spreadsheets, etc.) and can benefit from journaling (the system drive must have journaling turned on), and your 2nd drive, Mr. Speedy, will be ready to serve you when you fire up Logic, Final Cut Pro, etc. Play nice. Jazzman321 - When in doubt, crank up the jazz - ---