Toshiba laptop - 3 virtual hard drives??

parcival

My mother has just acquired a new Toshiba laptop to replace an old one that was full.

Her new one has a 640gb hard drive that is rather large for her limited needs.

When I look at the disk in Control Panel it shows 3 drives. A 'C' drive, a 'D' drive an a recovery drive.

The C and D drives are both large and virtually empty - what is the purpose of having 2 drives like this?

Thanks

Notmyrealname

One has recovery files on. Many people create an additional drive to store their files on so if the OS crashes then they don't lose their documents.

andy2004

C drive is the boot drive containing the Operating system,
D drive is the recovery partition. containing the image file of the current install OS, so when you get infected, or after a failed windows update you can restore the os back to factory fresh. DO NOT DELETE ANY FILES IN THE D partition.
depending on the manufacturer there maybe a hidden partition which stores the files to boot a special recovery program. aka when you press F10/F11 at bootup.

when your mum turned the laptop on for the first time it should have ask her to create a backup dvd to which she could reply, cancel, i'll do it later probably forget to do and then scream blue murder when it costs money to get recovery discs or OK, i'll do it now. and then ask for a blank dvd to be inserted.
If she hasnt created those backup/recovery disc's i suggest she does so soon, and then put them somewhere safe.
She'll need them if the harddrive every fails. I would also suggest burning a dvd with the image file on the D partition aswell, as a precaution. At least then if and when the harddrive fails you can just copy the files onto the new hdd and then proceed to reinstall them.

parcival

Thanks for the advice. In fact she has created the recovery CD's!

debitcardmayhem

parcival wrote: »

My mother has just acquired a new Toshiba laptop to replace an old one that was full.

Her new one has a 640gb hard drive that is rather large for her limited needs.

When I look at the disk in Control Panel it shows 3 drives. A 'C' drive, a 'D' drive an a recovery drive.

The C and D drives are both large and virtually empty - what is the purpose of having 2 drives like this?

Thanks

andy2004 wrote: »

C drive is the boot drive containing the Operating system,
D drive is the recovery partition. containing the image file of the current install OS, so when you get infected, or after a failed windows update you can restore the os back to factory fresh. DO NOT DELETE ANY FILES IN THE D partition.
depending on the manufacturer there maybe a hidden partition which stores the files to boot a special recovery program. aka when you press F10/F11 at bootup.

when your mum turned the laptop on for the first time it should have ask her to create a backup dvd to which she could reply, cancel, i'll do it later probably forget to do and then scream blue murder when it costs money to get recovery discs or OK, i'll do it now. and then ask for a blank dvd to be inserted.
If she hasnt created those backup/recovery disc's i suggest she does so soon, and then put them somewhere safe.
She'll need them if the harddrive every fails. I would also suggest burning a dvd with the image file on the D partition aswell, as a precaution. At least then if and when the harddrive fails you can just copy the files onto the new hdd and then proceed to reinstall them.

Surely the recovery partition is the recovery partition , C is normally System, D is normally Data and will basically be empty forever unless you use it for data. The recovery partition is not normally visible in windows. I would suggest what andy2004 said is only partly true, use windirstat and see what is on the drive it will have nothing on it but Recycle Bin, and System Volume Info directories. ....Waits to be shot down....

S0litaire

the way laptop and PC makers standardise the machines is to use a set-up based around the smallest drive in the range of machines.

So when the image is used on machines with a larger machines the extra space is usually given over to an extra "d:" drive.
So you end up with 3 drives

a C: windows drive

an empty drive

and a "hidden" recovery partition (well it should be hidden to most Windows installs!)

andy2004

well debitcardmayhem when my sister bought her pc from toyrus years ago, cant remember when, but i do remember that D has a image file of her system, wasnt acronis or ghost, something else. but it was there, i had to use it to recover her system after something happened to it.
but i did also state \/
Note: depending on the manufacturer there maybe a hidden partition which stores the files to boot a special recovery program. aka when you press F10/F11 at bootup.

debitcardmayhem

andy2004 wrote: »

well debitcardmayhem when my sister bought her pc from toyrus years ago, cant remember when, but i do remember that D has a image file of her system, wasnt acronis or ghost, something else. but it was there, i had to use it to recover her system after something happened to it.
but i did also state \/
Note: depending on the manufacturer there maybe a hidden partition which stores the files to boot a special recovery program. aka when you press F10/F11 at bootup.

Yep thats what the OP said "When I look at the disk in Control Panel it shows 3 drives. A 'C' drive, a 'D' drive an a recovery drive.
The C and D drives are both large and virtually empty - what is the purpose of having 2 drives like this?"

robmar0se

It is usual nowadays with very large hdds to partition them, lots of reasons, some already mentioned here.

Keeping system and personal data separate makes good sense, It is the system section (pagefile etc) that does most of the work, and so it would not be unusual for this partition to have difficulties eventually. The data partition works less hard, and potentially can hold massive amounts of music, photos etc.

Having large drives partitioned also make maintenence simpler, quicker. For example we usually split a 500gb drive 20:80, hence cleaning up a 100gb partition is much quicker than wading through a 500gb drive.

Usually in modern systems C is the system and D the data drive, the recovery partition does not usually have an allocated drive letter.