New laptop - where should I save files

tallmum

Hi - Sorry if this is a daft question, but I've just bought a Dell laptop and am puzzled with C and D drive split.

The PC should have 250gb in total, but C drive is 58gb and D drive is 164gb - I assume the "missing" space is some sort of recovery file?

The C drive contains the programme files etc and seems to be where data is automatically saved - but since it's small I can't save my music there and I've put this on the D drive.

Is it a good idea to separate the "programs" from the data and split them across the C/D drives? Is the current split sensible? - As you can tell I'm not very techie but recognise that now is the time to set this up (I never had this problem with my old PC!)

Thanks

macman

Bear in mind that your C&D drives are only partitions of the same single hard drive. If that drive fails you still lose the lot. So however you divide your data, you still need to back up to an external medium, be it DVD, CD or (best of all) a USB external hard drive.

tallmum

Thanks macman

I do have an external hard drive with data on it (thankfully since my other PC died!) - I guess if they are just parts of a whole for housekeeping purposes it may be better to store data on the D drive and programs on the C drive

Avoriaz

That C and D split is reasonably sensible and approximates what I would do. I would perhaps have made C smaller and D bigger but that is really just my personal preference. There is nothing wrong with 58gb and 164gb. All the space is still fully available.

Put all your programmes, small files etc on C and put your large music and video files on D as you are doing. That is what I do. Make sure you have regular and comprehensive backups.

The "missing" gbs could either be a hidden recovery partition or the difference between measuring mbs as 1,000,000 or 1,048,576, or a combination of the two.

Open My Computer, Explorer, right click on "Computer", select "Manage" and open "Storage" then "Disk Management".

If there is a hidden partition it should show up there. It won't be allocated a drive letter like C and D and that is why it doesn't show in Explorer.