vista partitions

[Guest]

I have windows vista home premium on an Acer Aspire 5610Z. The hard drive
shows as already having two partitions (local disk D,data) and local disc C,
which contains the Vista operating system and all programs. Is this normal
for Vista? Disk D is virtually empty of data and has 51 GB. What is it for?
Could I put another operating system on Disk D?

 

[XS11E]

I have windows vista home premium on an Acer Aspire 5610Z. The
hard drive shows as already having two partitions (local disk
D,data) and local disc C, which contains the Vista operating
system and all programs. Is this normal for Vista? Disk D is
virtually empty of data and has 51 GB. What is it for? Could I put
another operating system on Disk D?

It's normal. Acer is providing you with a "recovery partition" on
drive D: and somewhere in the help files you'll find information on
creating a set of restore CDs that will restore your system back to
it's original condition. If you make the CD set as directed, you
should be able to delete the D: partition or use it for whatever
purpose you chose.

http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/Acer eRecovery Management.pdf