C and D drive on laptop?

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longers

Legendary Member
My laptop is full, or I thought it was and have scrounged an external HDD to transfer my photo's onto to make some space but last night found I had a D drive with 53 GB of space on it as well as the C drive I knew about that has 1.8 GB.

Is there any reason not to transfer my photo's to the D drive and delete them from the C drive? - not forgetting to back up to DVD first.

I only use the laptop for surfing, watching DVD's and storing music and photo's if that makes any difference.
 
Location
Salford
My laptop is full, or I thought it was and have scrounged an external HDD to transfer my photo's onto to make some space but last night found I had a D drive with 53 GB of space on it as well as the C drive I knew about that has 1.8 GB.

Is there any reason not to transfer my photo's to the D drive and delete them from the C drive? - not forgetting to back up to DVD first.

I only use the laptop for surfing, watching DVD's and storing music and photo's if that makes any difference.

No reason not to... In fact that would be the norm in a system that's got a C: and a D:

It's fairly common to find computers shipped with a C: and a D:, the idea being that the C: is for system stuff (programs) and the D: is for your stuff (photos & music).


If you're saving in "My Documents" (or "My Pictures") and it's filling up the C: drive then you could consider moving the "My" folders (My Documents, My Pictures, My Music and so on) onto the D: drive. Look here for XP (it's similar for Vista).

If you find that the locations for these folders is already somewhere on D: then perhaps you should learn to start using the "My" folders instead of creating your own folders somewhere in C:

If you're interested, it's almost certainly the case that there is only one actual hard-drive in the machine but it's been divided in half to make your C: and D: so if the C: drive breaks then so does the D: (and vice versa) so one should not be seen as a backup of the other. It's called partitioning.
 
OP
OP
longers

longers

Legendary Member
That's very helpful, thankyou.

Have a bit of spare time tonight while the freezer defrosts so will have a go.
 

HelenD123

Legendary Member
Location
York
Thanks from me too MossCommuter. I tried moving the My Pictures folder recently but it wouldn't let me. It's worked with this method.
 

potsy

Rambler
Location
My Armchair
Glad you brought this up Longers, I was wondering about it myself. My netbook has two drives c and d, c is down to it's last 12gb now so wasn't sure what would happen once it fills up, thought things would automatically start saving to d.
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
if the C: drive breaks then so does the D: (and vice versa) so one should not be seen as a backup of the other.
Ah, backups...

I had a hard drive failure a few years back in which I lost a lot of stuff that I wanted and hadn't backed up.

Over a 10 year period, at least 5 colleagues had hard drive failures, including one who lost a year's worth of work. The company had to spend thousands getting the drive rebuilt by data recovery specialists to get some of the data back.

I told my bro-in-law about the importance of backing up his PC and fitted an external drive for him. I've had to restore his system a couple of times in 3 years after PC problems.

I finally decided that I should take my own advice and fitted a backup drive to my PC after Christmas. Since then, my PC power failed at a critical time and my hard drive got corrupted so Windows wouldn't start. I was able to use my backup to get my system running again in a couple of hours with the only data loss being what I'd saved since the backup.

If you only use your computer for fun, don't have any files on it that you'd mind losing, and wouldn't mind having to reinstall the operating system and your applications, then reregistering them, and going through setting up all of your personal preferences again - then, and only then - don't bother doing backups.

If you use your computer for anything serious, keep important files on it, wouldn't like to spend a week getting it back to the operational state it was in before your hard drive failure (that's how long it took me the first time without a backup) - then buy yourself a backup drive and do regular backups of your complete system! :thumbsup:
 
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chillyuk

Guest
My lappy has a c: and d: drive. My original manufacturers recovery files are on the d: drive so I keep well away from it, apart from the original making of recovery DVD's.
 
Even if it has a C and D drive it's likely the same physical disk just partitioned, so as Colin says, back up, back up, back up. Depending on how much you need to back up, online solutions are a good method as well, ideally a combination of several methods is best (reminds himself to go upstairs and do some backup's).
 
Location
Salford
then buy yourself a backup drive and do regular backups of your complete system! :thumbsup:

I am a big advocate of online services - there are free ones: Microsoft Skydrive, Google Docs & Ubuntu One (free to an extent) come to mind.

A backup of precious stuff there is safe even from burglars, flood, fire, you name it.
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
I like the idea of online backup of documents that I write, since I can't create too much data that way. Trying to back up lots of HD video clips and hi-res photos wouldn't quite so convenient. My upload speed is a fraction of my download speed.

I have several WordPress sites and I have them set up to email daily backups to my hotmail account.
 
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chillyuk

Guest
I am a big advocate of online services - there are free ones: Microsoft Skydrive, Google Docs & Ubuntu One (free to an extent) come to mind.

A backup of precious stuff there is safe even from burglars, flood, fire, you name it.

Genuine question:

Are they free from snooping, or would you simply not store anything sensitive on an online backup service.
 
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