Sanity Check on Aisle 2 please!

Well, having been firmly entrenched in the PC camp since my first clone way back in '81/'82, and Pro Tools on PC since PT 7 I am climbing out of that trench to venture into the exciting world of Mac. :p I bought my wife an iPad for Christmas so I got my feet wet. :rolleyes:



OK OK, I did all the of what ifs, wherefores, cost analysis, etc and for MY situation, the 27" iMac is what I have chosen.



There is no upgrading my current studio rig. My portable rig, a Lenovo 512 (?) which is an i5 processor, works fine for my mobile needs and is actually on par processor wise with my studio rig. But it IS under powered and struggles at times.



To keep my costs inline I have chosen the

1. 27" 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7.


2. 8 gb installed ram (8 gb additional Ram to be installed by me)


3. 1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm (because of issues with the Fusion Drive and audio)


4. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M


5. The wired Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (I have read about issues with the wireless interring with ProTools so why take the chance.


6. The wired Apple mouse


7. AppleCare Protection Plan (because I am Apple dumb)

I have a few 7200 RPM external NON BUSS powered drives that are used for recording and samples.



I will be connecting my 003+ Rack and 11R, and the HD Omni TB. (obviously NOT the 0003 and the Omni at the same time)



Looking at some of you guys' systems here, it seems I'll be OK with what I have chosen. But I have question about that huge hard drive.



Since I am dumb as a post about Mac, can I partition that internal drive in say half and use the new partition to keep one clone of the system on?



Or what would be recommended?



Excuse me if this seems too elementary, but like I said, I am dumb as a post when it comes to the Mac OS. I am trying to learn about it now before I get the machine..:D