right after the Windows 7 install. Most computers come with some pretty hefty disk space these days so during install make your Windows 7 primary partition around 80GB and then make a separate data partition with the remaining space. You'll want a lot of disk space for your data partition, particularly if it's storing mp3, video and image files from your My Music, My Video and My Pictures folders. Another good time to do this is right after the OS install, by dropping into the Disk Management portion of Computer Management within Administrative tasks. Shrink your Windows 7 primary partition and then create a new data partition. This can be tricky to do if your OS isn't a freshly installed OS (especially under Vista) so I'd recommend doing this right away after installing or go back and create the partitions during installation.

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