How should I configure my MacBook's new 320GB internal hard drive?

One partition, HFS+, Journaled.

Thanks, Dave. How big? Just for the OS & software? What’s the rationale?

I’ve never really understood the purpose of arbitrarily partitioning a large drive other than to do something like a dual-boot. I just personally see it as a hassle to have my OS and apps on one partition and data on the other. I’d just leave it as one big drive unless you want to do Boot Camp with Windows, then just use the Boot Camp installer to make a partition for that however big you want it.

I personally have a second hard drive that is the same size as my main drive and just do a mirror of that with SuperDuper! for backup.

Sorry, Dave. I’m reading you more clearly now… 1 partition = 1 volume. I was thinking 2 volumes.

Anyway, I did as suggested. Most of the online discussion leans toward 1 volume unless there’s a good reason to do otherwise (such as dual-boot). The only notable exception I read about is to create a backup/utility/emergency volume on a notebook drive in case the OS on the primary partition becomes corrupted.

@stellar- I now have external and internals of equal size and plan to mirror them with SuperDuper (which I had been using previously). Thanks for the suggestion.