Drive "C" and drive "D"

killwilly

My new laptop has a 220 GB hard drive, which is divided 50/50. At the moment all programmes are installed on drive "C". My question is. What is the purpose of drive "D",and could it be used for gaming files? Or will it remain empty forever?

muddyfox470

You can use it for storage of anything, it has come standard practice to create a separate boot partition (separated parts of a harddrive) for the operating system and the core programs. I use a different partition for installing games, music and videos. Just make sure you keep the partition tidy for your sake.
I.e. create 3 folders:
\Music
\Videos
\Program Files [or games] etc.

isofa

It's a partition, it's the same disc (as you already know), just split into two logical sections.

You can use it for whatever you like, you could keep all your files, photos and music on D, and just keep Windows and all your applications on C (which is what I'd suggest).

Or if you are a light user, you could setup backups to run from C to D, but remember that's fine if you accidentally delete files and want to bring them back from a backup, but if the actual hard drive fails itself, you'll lose originals and backups! (So I'd suggest having an external backup as well!)

Nowadays it's not that common to see drives partitioned like this, years ago it was much more popular.

Fifer

It used to be necessary to split disks into two or more logical volumes because disk capacity overtook the size limits that operating systems could cope with. I don't really see much need for the convention now.

geek0

It has the advantage that if you save the files on your second partition u wont lose them if u ever need to reinstall the operating system on the other drive as u only have to wipe the c drive to do that. As above poster says keep them in tidy folders though

killwilly

Thanks to everyone for your prompt and informative replies. :beer:

DCFC79

muddyfox470 wrote: »

You can use it for storage of anything, it has come standard practice to create a separate boot partition (separated parts of a harddrive) for the operating system and the core programs. I use a different partition for installing games, music and videos. Just make sure you keep the partition tidy for your sake.
I.e. create 3 folders:
\Music
\Videos
\Program Files [or games] etc.

i dont do this, maybe i should do,