new computer questions

[drumstik]

I just purchased a new 160 gig hard drive. What is the best way to configure the hard drive. A friend of mine suggested the following:
20 gig - Drive C Windows operating system only
5 gig swapfile
Remainder for files and applications

I'm no expert, but here is my comuter info:

Intel Pentium 4. 3.0GHz Socket-478. 800 FSB CPU

PC 3200 512/slot

I have 1gig of memory. but not for sure what all of this means. is what I have good?

Does anybody know what services are safe to disable or set to manual? Also, what recommendations to use as far as turning off themes, using a screen saver, power setting options, i want to get the best optimization possible.

[Usil]

20GB for the OS seems like a good idea. With 1GB of RAM, I am not sure if you will need a 5GB swap file, but it can't hurt.
Just don't forget to do your installs on the other partition, not on C:, otherwise you will run out of space quickly. What I did is change the registry to automatically install on my Installations partition.

[renegade600]

There is nothing wrong with your friends suggestion. As far as the 1gig of memory, it is talking about ram. 1 gig is plenty for most applications. As far as what to disable and such, it really depends what you do with your computer. Everybody is different.