A couple of multiple hardrive setup questions.

[baih777]

60 or 75 gigs depends mostly on how many programs you are going to load. as far as a partition for one operating system , i dont feel is neccessary. but if you want to then do it when you load the win7. it will ask you when it gets to that step. i always try and have the ethernet driver on a cd or flash drive just in case.
also did you notice that motherboard uses a 8 pin power connector for the motherboard. make sure your power supply has that connector or you will need to find a adapter.

 

[baron5]

You mention chipset, audio and LAN drivers. Wouldn't I just use the disk included with my MB? Also, I'm used to having a separate 10 - 100 pci ethernet board and the MB that I ordered has an on board LAN rj-45 socket. I assume that's what I'm going to plug into to access the internet now?

Yeah you can, but by now there is probably an updated intel p55 express chipset driver as with the ethernet and audio on your motherboard, the asus cd's are produced in mass when the motherboard is first made and you know how frequently new drivers come out. For the most part there wont be any difference in performance anyway, i just like to know that i am running the latest drivers for my hardware, keeps my sleeping each night.

Yep, you will be using the 10-100-1000 ethernet on your p7p55 board for internet now, sometimes windows will install some kind generic driver automatically and your ethernet will work fine before you have installed any drivers, but often this is not the case, so once you stick in that asus cd and load up the LAN/ethernet driver and restart (preferably do this after the chipset) your internet will work fine to download newest nvidia/ati drivers etc.

 

[Seawolf]

also did you notice that motherboard uses a 8 pin power connector for the motherboard. make sure your power supply has that connector or you will need to find a adapter.

This is the PSU ordered. Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Power Supplies
From all I can see I should be good on the 8 pin connector. Thanks for catching that. As for the partition on the 160 gig drive, I just hated to lose the extra drive space and install nothing but the OS on that drive and put everything else on the 1tb hd. I know that I can still put things on the rest of the 160 gig but without those items being on a separate partition I would end up losing them if and when I do a reformat. Again, I've never done partitioning so I'm still trying to figure the best way to do things in my head. I know for you guys that have been doing this for years it must seem pretty simple but I just have to get through it one time to find whats best for me.
Thanks for the information baron5, good to know on the LAN & drivers.

 

[baron5]

All modern psu's have both 4 and 8 pin and the corsair series is no exception. no problems, don't forget to add rep