Installing Windows Me under these scenarios affords you certain opportunities. It's the perfect time to partition (divide up) the hard disk into more than one disk drive. For example, a 12-gigabyte (GB) hard disk with the typical single partition would have only one drive that uses the hard disk-namely, drive C. But you could partition that hard disk into a number of drives: drive C could consist, say, of 6 GB, drive D of 4 GB, and drive E of 2 GB. Notice that the available space of the three drives adds up to the total disk space of 12 GB. Your CD-ROM or DVD drive under this scenario would end up with the drive letter F.

Such partitioning enables you to install another operating system, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, on another drive without conflicting with Windows Me. Or you can use other drives for storing large files or installing performance-demanding programs, such as games, and thereby minimize their affect on the performance of Windows Me, which would reside on drive C.

But doing all this involves a process that you must follow very closely. The following sections take you through this process, which are described by a series of four activities: