The boot partition is where Vista is actually installed. While the system partition is used to boot the operating system, the boot partition contains the operating system. The naming confusion continues with the boot partition. The system partition is used to boot the operating system, and it needs to house only a few key files and does not need to be large. If that’s the case, the system partition must be FAT or FAT32 to accommodate that configuration. For performance and security reasons, NTFS is recommended - unless you are configuring your system to dual boot an older Windows operating system, such as Windows 98. The partition can be formatted using FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. The system partition contains the files Vista needs to start up. Below is a brief description of each partition type. But with the massive hard drives available today, most drives will contain at least a couple of different partitions to make managing the drives and data less cumbersome, so understanding the partition types may be helpful in configuring your hard drive. Of course, if you have only one partition, it may fill all of the roles and perform all of the tasks. The three primary partition types in Vista are system, boot and active. Certain partitions fill specific roles or perform unique tasks required by Vista. Not all hard-drive partitions are created equal. There are some unique aspects to managing hard drives on Microsoft’s latest Vista operating system, which will change the way drives are partitioned, use of multiple drives and managing partitions. But the hard drive is a standard component that does change, and understanding how to properly manage hard drives can greatly enhance the performance and security of your system.

Each operating system requires some type of processor, RAM, peripherals and power.

Whether you choose Vista, an older version of Windows or some flavor of Linux as your operating system, the hardware components remain largely the same.

How to format my hard drive vista