New computer - data location advice

bficky

I recently replaced my 5 year old Dell laptop with this Acer laptop. I'm getting everything set up and would like some advice on where to put my data.

On the 250gb hard drive, it's currently split into two equal partitions, C (ACER) and D (DATA), both 111gb (I'm guessing the rest is on the hidden partition). I have two users set up in Vista, one for me and one for my wife. All of our music, pictures, and videos, are lumped together as one (and that's how I want it), so I have all of this shared data in the appropriate folders under the "Public" user (C:/users/public/pictures, etc.). Since we both use iTunes and Picasa, and want the same picture albums, playlists (the same database), I've followed the instructions here and here to allow each user to share the databases. Everything works fine.

I've already filled up most of my C partition with all this data, while D is empty. Does it make sense to move our data to the Data partition? I've looked online and lots of people advocate the OS on C and the data on D - it just seems like the division between data and OS isn't so clean cut (where would my Picasa database go, for example). Since our data is in the "public" user folder, is it even possible to have it stored on D? I didn't think so, so I just figured that I'd move the partition (or remove it) to give C as much room as possible.

I have a one-harddrive frame of mind, so I'm leaning towards keeping all my pics, vids, and music on C. Is there a point to keeping D around? Right now, my computer is all nice and clean - I'm just thinking ahead and wondering if one partition or two will keep my new computer clean and organized longer.

EDIT: Also, I went into Computer Management | Disk Management to look into moving the partition - but once I shrunk D, I couldn't add the unallocated space to C. Did I do something wrong?

wunderbar

The reason people always advocate having OS/apps and data on separate partitions is that if your OS dies it won't take your data with you.

I find that there is a little misconception there. 99% of the time if your OS dies the files are still there, you just need to have an alternate way of getting them off. If the HDD physically dies then all the data is gone, regardless of partitions.

I find if you're going to do that you should have seperate physical drives. On a desktop I usually recommend this to people. I have the all of my user data and documents stored on a separate HDD on my machine so if I ever kill the OS, or decide to re-install, I don't have to worry about any of my data.

On a laptop, what I usually recommend is just going with the single partition and for the love of god, make sure you keep regular backups.

bficky

wunderbar wrote: »

On a laptop, what I usually recommend is just going with the single partition and for the love of god, make sure you keep regular backups.

Yeah, I do. I have all our important data (basically our entire My Documents folder) synced to the desktop (with Windows Live Sync) and an external hard drive on the desktop that backs it all up.

How do you recommend removing the partition? I've heard about Partition Manager, but I was hoping for a way to do it without 3rd party software.

wunderbar

Since it looks like you have vista you can do it all in computer management. Either type it into start menu search or right click on my computer and click on "Manage"

you can go into the Disk Management tool in there and remove the D partition and re-size the C partition.

Feral

wunderbar wrote: »

The reason people always advocate having OS/apps and data on separate partitions is that if your OS dies it won't take your data with you.

I find that there is a little misconception there. 99% of the time if your OS dies the files are still there, you just need to have an alternate way of getting them off. If the HDD physically dies then all the data is gone, regardless of partitions.

I find if you're going to do that you should have seperate physical drives. On a desktop I usually recommend this to people. I have the all of my user data and documents stored on a separate HDD on my machine so if I ever kill the OS, or decide to re-install, I don't have to worry about any of my data.

On a laptop, what I usually recommend is just going with the single partition and for the love of god, make sure you keep regular backups.

There is a benefit to having multiple partitions in that if you reinstall Windows, you only need to reformat one partition.

That said, I find the benefit is not worth the trouble for personal users*, and I agree with you. Having two partitions on a Windows machine at home is more trouble than it's worth.

Spoilered for "footnote"

In a corporate environment with a standard suite of hardware and software, if you can create a standardized Ghost image that references the second partition for the user profile, then it can be worth the benefit. Because if you're one guy supporting 75 or 100 local users, you might be doing several reformat/reinstalls a week, and the amount of time you save just by blowing out the C: partition and replacing it with a brand new fresh install and then running a one-step user personalization script can be huge. But for a home user who might be reinstalling Windows once or twice a year, often with hardware upgrades, and with lots of new software added between reinstalled, the trouble isn't worth it.