Partitioning Hard drive

[Mahesha999]

Hi there, I just bought Dell XPS 15, with 500 GB HDD
I have habit of using 3 partitions.
One for System, 120 GB
2nd 190 GB
3rd 190 GB

But now, there is hidden recovery partition of 13.4 GB, C of almost 200+ GB & Another of again 200+ GB

Is that recovery partition important.
I created the partition backup for the whole C: using Acronis True Image, I hope I can use it to restore original setup if anything goes wrong.

Also I do not think its good idea to have 200+ space for System Partition. 120GB is enough, since I feel its bad to store anything on System partition, as it becomes tedious to backup anything placed on the System partition, if OS corrupts.

Also I have got Win 7 Home Premium. Should I use Ultimate as I do development work using SQL Server & Visual Studio

Its also of 64 bit. Will it matter to run these 32 bit softwares? Also, I heard that Xp mode is not there in Home Premium.

So what should I do?

Is there anyway to partition into 3 volumes, without losing that hidden recovery partition?

[mjdodd]

It looks like hte 13.4Gb is a recovery partition. On most Dell machines at start up ther eis an option to press one of the function keys to 'restore' it to the factory condition. This 'system' is kept on that partition. If you delete it you will lose the facility to return to factory condition.
The other two partitions seem to be what you have made and you can investigate/change them etc with any good partitioning program. The internal windows program is a bit limited, but there are some good free ones.
As far as XP goes you can install it on one partition but Win 7 home does not have the XP emulator in it.
as far as 32 / 64 bit goes this only applies to the actual way in which the program is written and should not affect the Hard drive; win 7 does a good job of automatically detecting and using the right 32 or 64 bit software a appropriate.

M