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Resolved Question

HD Partition/Management help

Feb 19, 2016 1:52AM PST

My apologies if this a silly question - but that's why I'm asking for help... Sad - also, i am in Madrid, Spain. Thank you all for the fantastic website/forum - it's better than anything we have over here...!!

I'm setting up a new hd on Win10 / my first time / I decided to partition 240 gb into 3 (30-30-180 or so)
C: is my current OS
T: is a clone/backup of a fresh/clean OS
X: is bulk storage

again, this is my first time doing this / if you have any suggestions on strategy or how to better do this, please weigh in - I have a wife and 2 small kids who often cause my OS problems (virus/malware, whatever, etc) so I was thinking that I could clone the current OS in it's "virgin" state, so that WHEN the kids foul up the working OS, I can simply replace it with the virgin version... (I also have this "virgin version" backed up on an external drive)

ISSUE: Please kindly have a look at my screen shot - 2 things jump out at me, that suggest I've made a mistake....

1.
my drives are yellow, as opposed to blue or black... they don't look right to me.... is that a problem? Should I / How do I correct this?

2.
My X: drive looks to be split into to 2 parts... Should this be done differently? How can I get them back into 1 piece?

Again - thank you very much...


Discussion is locked

nofishonmyside has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Re: disk
Feb 19, 2016 2:07AM PST

First of all, there is no picture in your post. That makes it difficult to comment. To publish a picture upload it to your favorite photosharing site and link to it.

Second, 30 GB isn't enough for Windows, it tends to grow during use. I'd allocate at least 60 GB for the c:\drive and keep your clones at a USB-stick (a 64 GB USB-stick is just nice, preferably USB3 because of its speed) and an external hard disk.

To install: just wipe everything and allocate that 60 GB partition during the installation of Windows 10. Then when that is up and running, use disk management to turn the unallocated remainder of the disk to a second partition. Then move the My Pictures, My Documents and such of all users to that new partition.
Reinstalling Windows 10 from a disk or USB stick this way can be done without license and activation issues after a succesfull (free) upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

And be sure not to give admin capabilities to your kids (and to your wife if you don't trust her in this respect). If they aren't administrator they can do much less harm.

Kees

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Answer
screenshot
Feb 19, 2016 2:25AM PST
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That partition scheme would be hard to live with.
Feb 19, 2016 8:44AM PST

You've painted yourself into a tight spot by partitioning like this. You may get upset but here goes.

1. Partitions no longer save our files from mistakes, etc. Today's bad things that encrypt files will not respect that your OS is here and your files are there.

2. Better idea. Let C be as big as possible, backup to some 256GB USB stick the whole thing (two for safety) and then for compartments for data files, use folders.

In fact your scheme on HDD results in lower speeds as the OS is here and files are way over there. Seek times in HDDs are in long milliseconds.

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Answer
sorry
Feb 19, 2016 2:27AM PST

sorry - for some reason, i've been unable to post a link from dropbox...
i don't know...
anyway, thank you very much for your reply - - i'll take your advice and start over - and thanks again.