Benefits Of Having Split Partitions On Hard Drive ...

[joko]

I recently got a new laptop (win 8) and it has the hard drive split into 2 halves - c & d

my old laptop (win 7) originally had this function and i found it a bit annoying - and when i reformatted, i made them one whole hard drive and preferred this.

i am debating whether or not to do that to this one, or whether to try to get used to having 2 places to store things

other than having another drive in case one fails, and keeping the recovery on a separate one, can anyone tell me any benefits to having it split?

thanks

[Buenchico]

Wikipedia lists the advantages and disadvantages of partitioning a drive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

[bhg481]

You don't say how big your 2 partitions are - both my laptops have a small partition as the second one (D) for system maintenance software/recovery etc, which shouldn't be meddled with.

There is still only one physical disc, so if that fails you lose both partitions anyway.

[joko]

c drive is 372gb and the other 537gb
bit too large to be a recovery drive
i dont think there is a recovery drive - well i cant find one when i search recovery - unless its hidden ...

[bhg481]

Well Joko, I agree that the second partition looks to be too large just for recovery purposes. I don't know anything about Windows 8 but there must be some way of displaying "invisible" system files like there is in earlier versions of Windows - if that shows the partition to be truly empty I can see no reason why you shouldn't merge the two partitions.
Read Buenchico's link first, though. He knows what he's talking about computer-wise and you might find there is adantage to you in keeping some things on a separate partition (I do).

[ivor4781]

i have 2 partitions and the recovery partition all my photos music and docs are on the secondary partition so if my system crashes and a reinstall has to be done on "c" you still have all your pics etc saved on the other one

[bhg481]

Be careful Ivor. A re-install is usually only possible if you have original discs.

All the systems I have have provided a means of restoring the system and doing so wiped the whole disc (not just one partition) and replaced it with the setup that came from the manufacturer. You then have to re-instate the data from backups and re-install all your user software.