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Partitioning drive

I am setting up windows for the first time on my new laptop and it is asking me to select partition size for c and d drive. I dont know alot about computers and dont know what size to select for each drive. There is a total space of 320gb. What is the best option? It says I can only do this once. I was thinking may be 250 gb in c drive as I will not be using the d drive much. Will that be an ok allocation. Thanks
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Comments

  • JasX
    JasX Posts: 3,996 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    with such a small drive i'd suggest one single partition of a 320GB C drive....
  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    I generally prefer to keep the operating system separate to my data to faclitate easier back-ups. Maybe I'd use 100GB for the boot partition, and the rest for data...?
  • coxy17
    coxy17 Posts: 68 Forumite
    The advantage of having two partitions is that if you need to re-install Windows for any reason, you can leave your data on the d partition and install a fresh copy of Windows on the c partition without loosing your data. Any music, photos and documents can be left for Windows to pickup after the install. You just need to make sure you do not format the d partition when you reinstall.

    I would suggest a 40GB partition for the c and the remaining disc space for the d.
  • Hammyman
    Hammyman Posts: 9,913 Forumite
    320GB is not a small size.

    To the OP. Split it 50/50. You can always resize them in Windows if you need more room on one or the other later on.
  • Ximian
    Ximian Posts: 711 Forumite
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    I also prefer to have two partitions, one for the OS and one for my data, which comes in handy if I need to reinstall the OS or upgrade. My suggestion is to ensure that you make the primary partition large enough, not only for the base install of the OS but to also provide additional space for Windows patches and any future add-ons which might need to be installed on the primary partition.

    Windows 7 space requirements are: 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit), using that as a guide, I would double the size for the Primary partition and like coxy17 said 40 GB should be fine.

    You also have two choices when adding additional products to your Windows installation, install them in the default C:\Program Files directory or on your second partition (what I prefer), just something to consider when you create the primary partition.

    If you need to resize the partition, EASEUS is pretty good (free):
    http://www.partition-tool.com/
  • JasX
    JasX Posts: 3,996 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Well there isn't going to be one right answer but I'm sticking with my 'keep it simple' suggestion.

    keeping your 'important stuff' on a separate partition on the same physical drive isn't going to be a good plan if its your ONLY means of backup.

    Having a 2nd backup elsewhere makes the 'only needing to format one partition' advantage minimal as its a trivial task to copy your backups from 'secondary backup X' onto the freshly reformatted drive.

    Other disadvantages of partitioning include filling up your C partition, having plenty of room on your D and needing to faff moving stuff over

    No you can't 100% safely resize things later.

    Chances are if you installed anythign to D you'll need to reinstall it again anyway to pickup the necessary registry entries

    if you keep D drive as it is your 'clean' rebuild isn't every going to properly clean things up as your D drive will be as fragmented and left with half installls as it ever was

    Even with the above a novice is more than capable of deleting or overwriting the wrong partition during a reinstall.

    Yes there are advantages to partitioning, -if you want to make sure you're on the fastest outer 10-15% rim of a drive and there has been some talk of partition alignment but i don't think we're quite there in this case.

    hence I'd default to 'keep it simple' :)

    anbd 320GB is certainly not a 'large' hard drive
  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    JasX wrote: »
    keeping your 'important stuff' on a separate partition on the same physical drive isn't going to be a good plan if its your ONLY means of backup.

    Storing data on a separate partition to the OS isn't a backup of any kind!?
    JasX wrote: »
    Having a 2nd backup elsewhere makes the 'only needing to format one partition' advantage minimal as its a trivial task to copy your backups from 'secondary backup X' onto the freshly reformatted drive.

    I use a drive imaging tool to make backups of my data. The imaging tool backs up whole partitions, so it makes sense to me to keep my data on a separate partition.
    JasX wrote: »
    Other disadvantages of partitioning include filling up your C partition, having plenty of room on your D and needing to faff moving stuff over

    No you can't 100% safely resize things later.

    Absolutely - it's trivially easy to partition a drive without any data on it; if you want to preserve the data it should be easy, but I've run into problems a few times. Even with backups, it can be a pain in the bum. This is one very good reason that many people prefer to have a single partition. But I still prefer (at least) two partitions!
    JasX wrote: »
    Chances are if you installed anythign to D you'll need to reinstall it again anyway to pickup the necessary registry entries

    if you keep D drive as it is your 'clean' rebuild isn't every going to properly clean things up as your D drive will be as fragmented and left with half installls as it ever was

    If "D:" is your data drive, you shouldn't be installing anything on it! There can be no "half-installs" on a data drive, and if it's fragmented, just run a defragmenter like you would on any other partition.
    JasX wrote: »
    Even with the above a novice is more than capable of deleting or overwriting the wrong partition during a reinstall.

    You'd have to be pretty daft to delete the wrong partition accidentally, but even if you did, just transfer the data from your backup like you would have had to do if you only had one partition! Having multiple partitions means you shouldn't need to do this, but even if you do you aren't any worse off.

    Hope this helps...
  • JasX
    JasX Posts: 3,996 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    esuhl wrote: »
    Even with backups, it can be a pain in the bum. This is one very good reason that many people prefer to have a single partition.

    Hence i'd push a novice user towards the single partition arrangement......

    More advanced users have a number of options they can pick from for themselves and there is no one right answer :)

    Personally I have a 1TB drive with the OS on a small outer 200GB partition of the drive for performance reasons*. Remaining 800GB kept spare for juggling stuff between drives.

    (*see here http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=658 )

    Games then installed on a separate physical hard drive (seem to survive OS reinstalls, mostly on steam which i think takes care of it). Media stored on another physical drive again, each to their own :)
  • cherry76
    cherry76 Posts: 1,026 Forumite
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    Hammyman wrote: »
    320GB is not a small size.

    To the OP. Split it 50/50. You can always resize them in Windows if you need more room on one or the other later on.

    Thanks, I phoned technical support and the guy suggested 50/50. That's the default.
  • JasX
    JasX Posts: 3,996 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    *deleted

    .............
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