Question About HDD Partitioning

[Lethals]

Hello, I recently purchased an Asus g73jw-a1 with two ST9500420AS hardrives, each with about 460 Gb of space. My laptop came from the company with four partitions across both disks. These partitions, I'm sure, are typical, but I will list them anyways:

OS (C - 116 Gb (2 Gb free)
Data (D - 327 Gb (0 used)
DSATA1 (F - 232 Gb (0 used)
DSATA2 (G - 232 Gb (96 Gb free) - Used for Windows Backup

Now, I am not experienced in the slightest with matters involving logical hard drive space, so my question is what are the ramifications if my OS drive fills? Also, what can I do to optimize my performance (Like, should all my current files be on the C: drive? I've researched, and as I understand, increased partition size translates to increased seek time and greater wear and tear on the hard ware)

Keep in mind, I may need explicit instruction, because all i really know how to do (not that I've done it, but I believe I can figure it out) is reassigning space to different partitions, but I feel that there is a better solution.

Thanks, Andrew R.

Edit: I would also like to avoid BIOS tweaks and that kind of thing. I'm just curious about optimization by... non invasive (?) means like appropriate allocation of files to their respective partitions.

 

[GeneO]

Assuming C and D are the same drive, I would shrink D and increase C into the freed space to make more room for the OS. If you start running out of space on C for logs, etc., Windows won't behave very nicely. You can use the free version of partition wizard to do this. Download it, familiarize yourself with it, then post here for help/instructions.

 

[Lethals]

Hey, I've done some research, and luckily, there is a Disk Management utility already installed on windows 7. However, when I shrink my D: partition, I cannot expand the C: partition using the free space that is created. Is Disk Management on Windows 7 the problem, or am I missing something?

Edit: They're also, I believe, both on Disk 0, so I don't really get why I can't move the space.

Update: For now, I'm moving all of my video games to my data (D drive until I can figure this out. Are there any forseeable problems with doing this?

 

[GeneO]

Yes, Windows partition management is limited. That is why I suggested Partition Wizard (or equivalent).

 

[Lethals]

I'll look into it. I moved my steam folder over to D:, and it seems that I'm experiencing minor issues with load times. I'll continue to test and see if there's a noticable difference. Is a reduction in performance expected under these cirumstances? I believe there to be no registry issues because I deleted the ClientRegistry.blob for steam and let it reconstruct the file in the new directory.

Edit: I'll download Partition Wizard and expand C: and move all my documents and such to Data and put the games back in C: if there is, in fact, a drop in loading times. What would recommend I move out of C: in terms of file types etc.?