Partitions

[largecar425]

will having your hard drive partitiond slow windows xp down?

[tain]

Not as long as there is enough room for the OS to "grow" and sufficient swap file space, but that can be on another partition.

[allen2]

If you consider that you'll be using both partition and that some application will move data from one partition to another (for example downloading with IE will use then %temp% space that is usually set on the windows partition) then those operations will be a lot longer and then slow down the computer.

[LLXX]

Depends which partition you install the OS on.

Due to hard drive design technology transfer speed is greatest near the edge of the platters, which may either be the beginning or the end of the drive depending on manufacturer and model.

[Takeshi]

The question is not specific to Windows XP, is it?

It's a bit like whether you work in one room or you have to constantly go from one end of the building to the other.

So it all depends on how you set it all up and what you do at the time.

In practice: whether you'd notice anything yourself is another matter. There would be many other factors that will slow down the performance.