Noob question on Hard Drives

I recently got a 300 GB SATA HDD and am wondering firstly if there is any advantage to a large number of partitions and also if there is any way to clone over only my Windows install and Program files.

To clone just used a disk cloning program. Google because I don't know any from the top of my head.

As for partitions, I recommend a small one around 15 gigs for windows and program files and then as many other partitions as you feel like having.

I have a raid making around 470 gigs so I made basically 4 100GB partitions (Movies, Television, Music, Miscallenous) and 2 25gb partitions (Games, Miscallenous), and used the rest on a system partition.

The number and size of your partitions doesn't have a performance effect but just be smart and make what you need and make sure it helps you organize your computer.