Partitioned hard drive

[Guest]

Hi
My new computer came with a partitioned hard drive. I dont know why they do
this.
New to me.
My hard drive is 120gb with 30gb of that partitioned and the 30gb listed as
C drive which is getting full. The rest of the hard drive is considered the
D drive
What is the right way to use this type of drive? the unused part of the
drive about 90gb of the space is called D drive?? Why do they do this can
you make it one or is this recommended??

 

[Andrei Ungureanu]

This is a good practice: the operating system on a separate (smaller)
partition and the rest of the files (software, documents, movies) on another
(larger) partition. And it will be easier for you in case you'll want to
reinstall the operating system. The reinstallation will not affect the other
files. Those are just a few reasons for that.

 

[Guest]

The usual way is to leave the OS and programs on C: and
keep all your data on D:. That's very handy. For
example, if you install something that blows up the OS,
you can recover your last backup of the system without
worrying about any changes made to your data since that
last backup.

You can do whatever you want with it but I think it's
already the best way.

 

[Eric McG]

It's good practice to partition large drives. You've probably heard it said,
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket". That advice will make a lot more sense
when you're faced with a need to restore your hard drive and you don't have a
backup of anything.

If you really want to recombine both partitions into one, you'll need a third
party utility like Partition Magic.

Here's an article worth reading:

PLANNING YOUR PARTITIONS
http://winsupportcenter.com/a/parts.htm

 

[Harry Ohrn]

You can move your My Documents Folder and it's contents to D by right
clicking the My Documents icon and select Properties. Then change the path
to D:\My Documents. That will free up space on C. The files you save to the
My Documents folder will now be located on the D partition which comes in
handy if you ever need to reinstall your operating system onto C. If you
find you can't boot your system you can copy files from C to D before you
reinstall the OS. A little freeware app called NTFS Reader For DOS will
enable you to do the transfer. You can also move your Outlook Express store.
Create a New folder in your D partition. Call it something like D:\OEStore.
Then launch Outlook Express go to Tools->Options->Maintenance->Store button
and direct it to the new folder you created. Now all your e-mail is safely
tucked away on D. If you reinstall the OS on C your e-mail won't be lost.
You can also schedule backups to D and copy files there. Or you can purchase
a decent third party backup tool like Acronis TrueImage and schedule it to
periodically backup your system D.

Think of it like having 2 hard drives. The main difference is that if your
drive fails though both partition might be lost so always backup important
data to a secure source like CD/DVD, second hard drive or the like.

 

[Alex Nichol]

My new computer came with a partitioned hard drive. I dont know why they do
this.
New to me.
My hard drive is 120gb with 30gb of that partitioned and the 30gb listed as
C drive which is getting full. The rest of the hard drive is considered the
D drive

This is the third time you have asked this in as many hours. This is
not a high-interaction system, but is putting out questions to people
all around the world, and it may be 24 hours to get an answer. You have
been answered - go back and look (and that is a sensible division of a
disk)