partitioning

What are the advantages to partitioning your hard drive?? I'm trying to install panther and it's giving me this option,...if I choose to partition now I'd have to back everything up first to reinstall later since the partitioning seems to erase everything...sounds like a time-consuming tast, just wondering if it would be worth it for any reason at all...

THREAD MOVED

partitioning maps your drive to act as many different drives. the advantage comes if one partition becomes corrupted, or the OS on that partition needs to be reinstalled, your files or other OSes are safe on the other partitions