Large Paritions... advice?

[Nebu John Mathai <mathai@ecf.utoronto.ca>]

Hello,
    I would like to install Debian 2.0 on a 3 Gig partition which I do not
want to split
    further.
    1. Are the problems of possible filesystem corruption realistic?
    2. Are there any performance losses with ext2fs on a 3 gig partition?
    3. For a single user workstation, hooked to the internet via cable
modem (and with
    telnet and ftp servers enabled) would a single 3 gig partition be ok,
or would it be wiser
    to split it up?
    4. Hardware-wise, are larger partitions worse on the drive than
multiple small ones? Or
    is the drive indifferent?

I have a single 8.4 Gig drive and I planned on having:
100 MB Linux root
2.9 Gig Linux /usr
100 MB Linux swap
3.0 Gig NT (unfortunately)
2 Gig FAT32 /home (common for Linux and NT)

But CFDISK would not let me parition it like this so I had to incorporate
Linux into one
massive 3 Gig partition.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has had horrible experiences with
filesystem
corruption (hope not to hear from anyone, I guess).

Thanks for any help, and if this has been discussed elsewhere please point
me to a FAQ
and I'll shut up.

Thanks again for your advise,
Nebu