Partitions vs. Additional Hard Drive

Sorry I keep making similar posts, just my old one got kind of buried now.

I should be getting my new PC tonight and I'm just trying to get decided on all this before it gets here so I can get rolling :)

I've been looking at different methods of partitioning and I'm not sure what is best to go with. I'm looking into maybe putting my OS by itself on one partition, having one for my pagefile, then all my programs and data files go on the remainder.

The other option is to install apps and OS to the same partition, have a pagefile part., then just data files on the remainder of the harddrive.

What is the best method? If programs/apps are separated from the OS partition, I would still have to uninstall/reinstall them for them to function correctly, right?

Or should I just put everything on the unpartitioned HD (save for the pagefile), then just externally back up my data files?

What is easiest/smartest thing to do?

Putting the pagefile on a separate partition is no use. Only if you woudl put it on another drive would there be a slight improvement. More partitions slow things down (you can only read from the same disk one place at the time after all).

Do like most people do: one partition for OS and programs and one for data. This allows you to reformat the OS drive if needed without losing your data and to dual boot if you want to later on.