fresh install of winxp do I need a partition

[bmcg]

I am doing a doing a fresh reinstall of win xp, for a laptop hard drive replacement. The old hard drive had a fat 32 partition in it, although the main drive was ntfs. I was told by Dell that the new drive will not have any partitions in it and a fat32 partition should not be in it.
Just wondering should I just create one big partition and install win xp, or does a small fat partition serve a purpose?
(Obviously, I would rather just install the xp and have no other partition)
Advice appreciated.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: fresh install of winxp do I need a partition

There are reasons to have multiple partitions, but the FAT32 partition that was prevously present was likely for restoring Windows easily in the event that it stops booting. Many OEMs do this. But that's irrelevant now, so you could just go ahead and make the entire drive an NTFS partition.

If you wanted to have multiple partitions, it would be for other reasons. One partition for the operating system, one for applications, and one for files is good in the event that one partition fails so you still have the other partitions, and for organizational purposes.

[bmcg]

Re: fresh install of winxp do I need a partition

Thanks for the info. :)