Partitions - do I need them?

[Diana & Graham Stevens]

I have had partitioned hard drives for years, in the old days there 
were good reasons such as blocking factor. I always liked to have my 
system on a separate partition so that I could wipe it clean and 
start again. But now with the later versions of OS X this does not 
seem so necessary.

At present I have OS 10.3.3 on a 5 gig partition of my 60 gig drive 
and I am getting messages about my startup drive being full. The 
partition was quite adequate with 10.1 but even though I don't 
install any software on it the updates etc have filled it and there 
is only 650 M left. I need to do something urgently before it falls 
over.

I am tempted to go back to having just one partition. Anyone got any 
advice or suggestions before I do it?

Diana