How to allocate the processes to various drives?

Question

I am ready to render my movie project come hell or high water!
Could you please descirbe specifically which processes you would allocate to which drives on a quad core PC during the rendering process & what names you would give them.
I have a brand new laptop :- well I was going to paste my PC specs here but this window won't allow cut/copy/paste!!!! yet another totally frustrating aspect to this supposedly layman's software!
So from that little outburst you can tell I am at my wits end...................I have read these forums until my eyes bled. I am now even more confused & have 40 more questions than I started with & realize I'm supposed to be an expert on more things than many people would know about in a life time just to operate this PrE software.
So now to do the long hand typing..............
Brand new Asus laptop
win7sp1 up to date 64bit,
IntelR i7-2630QM CPU 2GHz Quad core,
1.5Tb hard drive,
16Gb RAM,
3Gb graphocs card running nVidia EForce with 17.3" screen,
drive C:\ OS 202Gb free of 279Gb,
(D:) DATA 394gb free,
(E:) SDATA1 349Gb free,
(F:) SDATA2 349Gb free,
1xUSB3 & 3+ x USB2,
Removable expansion HDD 2Tb Seagagte USB2 (fast but actual speed unknown),
Blue Ray RW+- CD/DVD internal burner,
Paging file 16361Mb on C:\
Trail version Trend Micro Titanium
Photoshop Premiere Elements 9 up to date.
Not being previously aquainted with more than 1 core, I'm not sure which part of the rendering process to allocate to which drive.
The file will be a big one that's for sure. I didn't know that I was supposed to change the default settings of the PrE or that the photos might be too big. These things are not a problem with WMM.
So the movie is as follows:- (again longhand typing... sigh)
movie files are all .avi   640x480   30f/s   88kbps audio   
all photos are . jpeg mostly 3264 x 2448  180dpi  1.75Mb
all taken with  Cannon PowerShot camera
This project is the first of a set of 3 which will all be17mins long about half & half stills(5sec duration each) & video, with some titles &  lots of transitions.
Since I have the whole PC to use to do the rendering & then burn to file, I'm not concerned about what resources get used. I am sick of making changes & just want to get it done to see if it works & if it will fit on a DVD after. I am burning to file because if more than 1 movie will fit on a disk, that is the way I want to set it up.
So other questions relating to this rendering are:-
Can I do it all in one go or do I have to do it in sections,
Should I make a copy of the movie file first incase it doesn't go well,
I know nothing of how to set the defaults, I just want the movie to play on HD TVs using various DVD players & the odd computer all belonging to friends.
Are there generalised presets for wide screen.
I have previously done a test movie using videos & still photos from this same camera & included titles & transitions & then just burnt it without rendering & it turned out well enough except the picture was a bit too big on the TV.

Answer 1

Will reducing the size of the photos still mean they show the best quality on the TV screen?
I did make a test movie using some of the same vids & stills I was going to use in the proper movies. It was my first use of PrE & I used it just like I had been using WMM, then the shocks started because PrE doesn't operate like WMM!  However I was happy with that test movie except for the slightly larger than ideal picture with an almost square aspect on the TV even though I had selected a widescreen aspect at the time burning.
Steve the 'properties' doesn't say the vids & stills are MPEG AVI files just .avi. There are also stills & video from another camera that I do have to use in the other 2 movies in the set & they are definitely MPEG with crazy codecs because the camera is a Kodak (apple based). There didn't seem to be any problem with PrE using them or the .avi files or the larger still images all in combo in the 1 test movie. I didn't know about rendering at that stage so I just burnt it to disc.
That's why I just decided to quit stuffing around with this first project & get onto finishing it. I will make a copy of the PrE file as it is now then get onto rendering more as a test to see how it will turn out. If it is all wrong or can't finish I will go back to the copy & modify. But knowing which drives to allocate to which parts of the process is all new to me.
I neglected to mention in my firt post that I have to make PAL movies here in Australia.
The new PC's harddrives are all configured NTFS.  My old laptop had an NTFS harddrive. It's the one I used to make the test movie when I first loaded the PrE on it & discovered it wasn't big enough to make movies more than 6-8mins long possibly due to the photos being so big & also because I never rendered it first.
Hunt,  I paid a lot for this new laptop PC because I was under the impression it had 4 separate drives rather than 1 drive with 4 partitions. I certainly never wanted partitions. Now after what you have just said, I'm not sure what I have. I'm sure the specs talk about different drives. It certainly pictures 4 separate drives in the sys inf & the PC is said to be quad core which to my understanding in this country should mean 4 physical drives. Also I think somewhere  I came across the part numbers or registered numbers for each drive although I can't find that place now.
The drives are MATSHITA BD-MLT UJ240AS  DVD/CD-ROM  Does that give you any insight to whether there are 4 HDDs or just 1 HDD partitioned?