Talk to me about hard drive partitioning. I'm currently running windows XP on my laptop which has been installed since new. However, as even the most basic of tasks now seem to take ages I have been advised to try re-installing windows.

My question is: if I partition my hard drive first can I just save all my data (music, photo's, etc.) onto the new partition and then just re-install the operating system onto the other one? Or does it have to be all done from scratch?

If you change the partition size there is a risk of data loss IIRC. Back the files up on a removable media and then clean fresh install.

You can but as stated above partitioning a hard drive risks loss of data. Backup first on a different hard drive. Then it might be easier to just insert your XP CD and do the partitioning during installation.

I think something called GParted or something like that can be used – you boot from a cd / usb stick but its not for those that don't know what they're doing

Try some of these 😉

http://www.metpost.co.uk/mp_boltdown.html

Back when FAT16 was the standard there was an application called Partition Magic, which did the job pretty well. I partitioned a 2.5GB Seagate monster into 5 to keep the cluster size down.

Just done a quick Google, You can get it from Norton or there are free alternatives here;

http://tinyurl.com/yejbwgc