New laptop partition sizes

[tickle]

My new Samsung laptop with Windows 7 is asking me what proportion of my HD I want as c and d. It is 232GB in total and the d drive has to be minimum 40GB.... I have no idea what sizes to make them as have never come across partitions before. It says I can't change the sizes once I have set them (although I gather from reading other forums that this may be possible with other software). Any advice would be appreciated.

:sarc:

 

[Thorsen]

Edit: Bad info in Grey (this looks like setup for recovery partition)

I would probably do 80-100G for the C: and the rest on D: I am guessing it is setting it up for C: for OS and programs and D: for data storage. I haven't seen a computer demand partitioning during startup.
From within Windows Disk Management you can create and delete partitions and if you delete the D: partition you can expand the C: partition into it I think.

 

[electrotune1200]

Just be careful and be aware of where your Recovery Partition is located. It would probably be a good idea before you start messing with partitions to create a set of backup discs or a system image on an external HDD.

 

[tickle]

No, me neither - I gather it's a new thing! All it says is 'saving important data or backup images to the d drive can prevent data loss and can be used for easy system restore in case of system corruption' so I'm not even sure it's asking me to partition for OS vs data.

If it's literally just for backup I'm tempted to just set the d drive to the minimum (40GB) leaving just over 190GB for the usual c drive stuff.......?

 

[tickle]

electrotune - I haven't even got as far as the desktop yet. This is an essential step in the set up which I can't bypass so it's not a case of 'messing' with them - I need to set the partitions up!

 

[Thorsen]

Yes. the 40G min for backups is the way to go

 

[Thorsen]

I am suprised it actually let you modify it at all instead of just setting it up for you, and 40G is a big chunk of your HD.

 

[tickle]

Yeah, it's assuming some background knowledge of hard drives which I wouldn't have thought most people have.... Thanks

 

[Lomai]

I would probably do 80-100G for the C: and the rest on D: I am guessing it is setting it up for C: for OS and programs and D: for data storage. .

+1 - this would be the ideal for your setup. Leave the remaining for your D-partition.

 

[Thorsen]

I would probably do 80-100G for the C: and the rest on D: I am guessing it is setting it up for C: for OS and programs and D: for data storage. .

+1 - this would be the ideal for your setup. Leave the remaining for your D-partition.

I was wrong on this Lomai. I think his D is a recovery partition and should be the min 40G

 

[Lomai]

I would probably do 80-100G for the C: and the rest on D: I am guessing it is setting it up for C: for OS and programs and D: for data storage. .

+1 - this would be the ideal for your setup. Leave the remaining for your D-partition.

I was wrong on this Lomai. I think his D is a recovery partition and should be the min 40G

Thanks Thorsen.

Tickle

Could you give us the model number for your laptop?

 

[Thorsen]

Yeah, it's assuming some background knowledge of hard drives which I wouldn't have thought most people have.... Thanks

yeah right? wierd. This is not known stuff unless you've been in computers for a while. It was wrong for this company to assume everyone purchasing a new computer would know about this.

I am sure they expected everyone to just be confused, panic, worry, and then select the default and hope for the best.

Kudos to you on questioning and researching the issue. Bravo.

 

[whs]

Set it up to anything you like. You can always change it later once we can have a look at your Disk Management. Chances are that there are further partitions being allocated - e.g. the 100MB active boot partition and the partition with the factory image. What they call "recovery partition" now is most likely for Win7 imaging, else I would not know why they are asking for a 40GB minimum.

 

[gregrocker]

The Recovery partition will be a separate hidden partition and isn't set up by User.

The App is asking you if you want to separate your data drive from the OS drive, a popular arrangement whereby your OS and programs are installed to the first partition C drive, then your User folders and storage are on a separate partition which acts as a data vault if the OS should fail to boot. You can then easily reimage the C drive from a Win7 backup image and your data will all be in place and up to date on D waiting for it.

If you are going to try this, Here is the tutorial for how to set this up: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

If you want to follow this approach, I recommend 50-100gb C drive depending upon how many programs you have. You can resize it later by shrinking in Disk Management, then Resizing D using free Partition Wizard bootable CD which is the best manager to do what Disk Mgmt cannot, in this case resizing the left border of a partition.

Once set up and running, save a Win7 backup image externally along with a routine backup of D data in case of HD failure.