Not as much storage as I thought!!

WestieFan

Hi folks, once again I have to ask advice from you lovely people!

I just bought myself a new laptop. Old one was ok, but only had a 40gb hard drive and as I do a lot of stuff with photos & videos, it was full, with everything having to be moved to an external drive.

Anyways, the new laptop has 160gb hard drive. I uninstalled the software that I didn't want, including the usual 30-day free trial stuff, and downloaded and installed some anti-virus and anti-spyware stuff that I prefer. I had a look at the properties of the drive after that. It has been partitioned into two; Vista (C) shows 54.5gb free of 74.4gb. The other is Data (E) and shows 68.4gb free of 73.1gb.

Before I install my photo/video software (Elements, Pinnacle, etc), I was wondering if I could save them to the C drive along with Vista to save a bit of space on the E (Data) drive, as there appears to be around 20gb free on C? Or is this not a good idea?

norbie

Normally when you install software you can choose a custom installation and tell it where to install to.

So for instance you could install to C:/Program Files or E:/Program Files - wherever you want to.

It annoys me when a drive comes with 2 partitions. Some manufacturers like to split programs from Windows in case something goes wrong. All a bit pointless in my eyes...

WestieFan

Yes, I am a bit hacked off myself, especially when there is about 20gb going spare on the C drive. Photo/video software tends to be quite large, and I would also like to put Microsoft Office on (qualify for the Student cheapie version, thankfully!), and this will make a bit of a dent into the 70-odd gb on the Data Drive.

vyseyboy

Maybe I'm being silly, but when presented with two drives, I've always assumed c: to be used for windows and programs (i.e. c:/program files/...), and e: to be used for media / data of my choosing.

It'll certainly work that way, so if that's what you'd like, go for it.

Remember to always leave a couple of gigabytes on c: for the swap file / just in case.

WestieFan

I remember years ago when we were shown how to partition a drive the tutor said something about having the OS on one and your data on another, I just couldn't remember if he said it was ok to put programs on the partition with the OS too!
As always, if in doubt, as the MSE techie folk!

R0CKY

Vyseyboy is correct. Two partitions is an excellent idea. One partition should be kept for the OS and program installs, the other drive for raw data. That way if you ever have a serious system failure, your data should be safe on the second partition. Also, when you are doing system maintenance such as defragging you can save time by only doing the partition that needs it.

Westiefan should install his programs to the c drive, but the data (ie. the movies/photos) should be saved to the other partition. You can install many apps in the 20Gb doing it that way, but you really want to make sure you keep at the very least 5Gb free space on the OS partition.

WestieFan

Thanks for confirmation Rocky, installing all my stuff at the moment (so far without incident, apart from having to download printer driver for Vista). Happy bunny now!
:beer:

timbim_2

I would always prefer to have two separate disks instead of two partitions. The primary cause of data loss (barring stupidity) is drive failure, so to that end, two partitions will no nothing. Any machine for video editing should have two HDD's, one for OS + apps, the other for data, reason being that the usage is so high, sending a head around it too fast will cause a failure very quickly.
One thing I would say, keeping a separate partiton for swap is good practice, as it tends to fragment and take over the entire disk! (Stupid XP)

BritBrat

If you install your programs to another partition leaving the C drive with the operating system on.

Should you ever have to restore it and after you have and then reinstalled the programs to the other partition all your old data for them should still be intacted.

Installing everything to the C drive leave no option but to lose it all in a reformat/reinstall.

That is why people do it the other way.

Nilrem

I tend to always install apps and the OS on the C: drive.
Then use additional drives/partitions for any data, changing the location of "my documents" etc to use that additional drive/partition.

That way if the OS falls over your data is on a different partition, so you can just reinstall if need be (chances are if you reinstall the OS you'll need to reinstall apps at the same time anyway, as even if you install them to a different partition/drive you're likely to end up missing registry entries they'll need in Windows).

For a bit of extra security I tend to have 2+ drives in my machines with the data from my docs etc copied from one drive to another every few weeks (so if the main drive fails i've got copies of most of it).

timbim_2

Or, you could opt for a RAID1 setup, real time backup!