So finally upgraded my laptop to a new Asus (model A53E). Asus likes to install hidden backup partitions on their computers, but mine has 2 visible partions: a C: drive and a D: drive

Now, i'm ignorant about partitions and have obviously never used them before. What is the appropriate way to utilize these? Should i even keep them or could i just reformat into one partition?

1/8/2012 11:26:33 PM

that particular C: and D: setup is actually a pretty good practice.

the way you utilize them - install all your programs as you normally would on the C: drive. But all your documents, music, movies, etc, you keep on the D: drive. the benefit to this is, if you ever need to reinstall Windows, all your data will remain on the D: drive after you reinstall. only the C: drive would be wiped. that said, there's ways to remap the My Documents, My Music, etc folders to save on the D: drive by default. you can google for more info on how to do that if you want.

i don't know if Asus does this, but there might be more hidden partitions other than the C: and D: drive there. some PC manufacturers put a recovery partition on there, which in my opinion is pretty pointless and i usually get rid of those and reclaim the space for my own partitions. you can use the Windows Disk Manager utility to get a closer look at the partitions on your drive(s)

1/8/2012 11:59:02 PM

^I second all of this, but given that the hard drive capacity looks to be fairly small (300GB?) I'd be tempted to reduce the C: drive by 50GB and move them over to the D: partition.

1/9/2012 10:02:00 AM

be careful with that though. if you shrink the C: drive down to say 70 GB, but then later on find yourself bumping up against that limit, it can be tricky to reclaim any unused space on the D: drive and increase C: again (because of fragmentation and the order in which partitions use up their unused space)

1/9/2012 11:14:06 AM

^^Correct. There is also a 25 GB partition from the factory that is empty (which i'm assuming is the recovery partition). I've spent some time googling the correct way to use the D: drive as the default location for user accounts/data but haven't found any good information...

Apparently the "microsoft recommended" way is the go into the properties of, say, the documents folder and change the default location under the "location" tab. However, i don't have this tab on any properties menus for whatever reason...

any help?

[Edited on January 9, 2012 at 11:20 AM. Reason : ]

1/9/2012 11:19:46 AM

Quote :

"Apparently the "microsoft recommended" way is the go into the properties of, say, the documents folder and change the default location under the "location" tab."

Are you talking about the Documents library or the My Documents folder?

1/9/2012 1:11:40 PM

The "My Documents" folder

which oddly enough is by default at %USERPROFILE%\Documents

[Edited on January 9, 2012 at 5:24 PM. Reason : "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents" in XP and earlier, "%WINDIR%\My Documents" in 9x/ME

1/9/2012 5:23:16 PM

I finally got it...if i access the user files through 'computer' i can change the default location of various user folders like documents, desktop, music, etc. Hopefully i won't run into issues...so far so good. This is remarkably easier than the tutorials i found on sevenforums.com

1/9/2012 11:48:07 PM

did windows 7 ALWAYS allow you to move the location of the user folders? because i distinctly remember noen calling me a "power user" for wanting to do what was stupid easy in XP (moving the entirety of the "my documents" folder (which is the user folder in windows 7 and includes all the sub-folders like music and pictures)...i discovered the location change option about a year ago and was happy to see that microsoft finally got with the program and made it (at least a little easier) to do what makes sense to begin with

^ did you not have to change the individual locations of the folders? was there a one-change option that changed the location for the entirety of a user's profile? if so...can you tell me about what you did? because when 7 was new, i too found those sevenforums tutorials ridiculously tedious and now just change the location of each individual folder...i'd rather have an XP-like solution and it sounds like that's what you're talking about

also, while i'm wishing for things that will never happen, it'd be great if they'd allow me to pin actual shortcuts to folders on the superbar so i don't have to click twice

[Edited on January 10, 2012 at 8:33 AM. Reason : waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahbulance]

1/10/2012 8:26:21 AM

I had to individually change the folders, but it was quick work obviously. At first i went into the registry and edited the drive for my user profile and then copied that user profile folder to the partition, but that didn't work as expected (i can't remember what went wrong). I said fuck that and reverted it back. After that i found the location tabs for each folder of the user profile, and just changed the default drive for my big data folders (desktop, music, documents, etc.)

You would think one could just copy and paste the entire user folder onto the new drive, but Windows 7 can fully handle that i guess. Whatever, i accomplished what i meant to do i suppose...

1/12/2012 11:52:23 PM

^ for a long time, the registry change was the only way to do it, IIRC...and even then i never got it to work right AND it was a pain in the ass, to boot

while i could hope for a location tab on the entire user folder, moving the individual folders is good enough...which is what i've done, already...i was hoping you'd found something better

microsoft will figure it out someday, i'm sure

1/14/2012 4:41:13 PM