I only have one HDD, the same as the original poster, I have my SWAP on the OS partition.

I have found that the OS uses the fastest available SWAP, so I have multiple SWAP's through my partitions. MANY CLAIM that spanning your SWAP through multiple partitions is a bad thing, but like I said before, it uses the fastest available.

It is my advice to NEVER have a partition larger than 30GB, with the exception of a larger area in which you only put CRAP in it.

Example: programs and games, things your use alot in general is best in a partition less than 20 to 30GB; backups, downloaded files, and junk can be placed on any sized partition within limits of the OS.

My HDD is the Maxtor 40GB\2MB cache 7200RPM, just like the original poster. I have it setup as the following...

5GB OS/SWAP Windows 2000 Pro, and a 1GB SWAP

20GB Program Files w/ 128MB SWAP (all games and programs are installed here, I even have it as the defualt Program Files folder)

10GB Junk w/ 64MB SWAP (since this is the slowest area of my HDD, all my junk goes here, it is the "My Documents" area, I have a folder inside that holds the systems "Temp" and "TMP" files so that my OS never uses more than 1GB of space.

3GB is being use to learn Linux, the rest is used from the File system and such(it says 40GB, but of course never is...)

Afte reformatting and installing my OS LITERALLY about 500 or so times through the past 2 to 3 years this setup has given me the best performance.