+1 on all the advice so far. I use separate partitions for /home on all my home machines. Ubuntu and pretty much all other distros offer an optional install path that allows you to choose to mount some other drive or partition as /home. Just be sure to uncheck the "format" option! <g> With a 500GB drive for root, I would consider doing the new OS as a separate partition on that drive - shrinking the existing one if needed. This gives you time to fix any problems with the new OS while keeping the existing one as a working system. If your new apps "upgrade" the data in the other drive, that won't work, though. All my very best, Rob