How to correctly setup my laptop drive..

[Cosmin 23]

Hi..Just got a brand new Asus laptop which comes only a 256gb SSD. Any advices how to setup correct my partitions? 

 

[+warwagon 11,342]

Looks good. I'd just keep it the way it is.

[Cosmin 23]

How can I add another partition & split the existent one? 

[T3X4S 4,530]

OK - I really dont understand.  Maybe Im slow, but the obvious things that come to mind:
1.) WTF are you talking about ?
2.) You havent stated why you need to partition it
3.) Why change ?
4.) What exactly do you think you're trying to accomplish ?
5.) Did I miss something here ?
 

[Andrew 2,855]

3 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

How can I add another partition & split the existent one? 

 

Because your drive is completely allocated to C: currently, you'll first need to shrink it to your required size and then create a new simple volume for the 2nd partition, again to the required size. Repeat as many times as needed.

[T3X4S 4,530]

7 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

How can I add another partition & split the existent one? 

Oh !

OK - 

hit Windows key & type Disk Management

Now you can add partitions - but again .... why ?

Or you can use any number of free Partition Mgr utes out there - I like MiniTool

Why again do you feel you need to partition things?  I mean - how confusing can it get ?  You only have 256GB....

 

+1 What Andrew said - you need to shrink C before you can add more.

Did I asky why ?  yet ?

 

[Cosmin 23]

I need an additional partition for easier organizing my stuff..do you undertand? if not.. go home. 

OK..did this.. but I'm a bit worried by the large file size allocated for system reserved..is there a chance to grab some hundreds from there and add to the D drive? or C? 

[Brandon H 1,887]

4 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

I need an additional partition for easier organizing my stuff..do you undertand? if not.. go home. 

OK..did this.. but I'm a bit worried by the large file size allocated for system reserved..is there a chance to grab some hundreds from there and add to the D drive? or C? 

not without reimaging the drive

 

you can extend a partition forward on a disk but not backwards without risking corruption or affecting the boot table if it is a boot partition.

 

booting into GParted disk will let you do this (after showing a warning) but the windows disk manager will not allow it.

[DConnell 5,963]

2 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

I need an additional partition for easier organizing my stuff..do you undertand? if not.. go home. 

OK..did this.. but I'm a bit worried by the large file size allocated for system reserved..is there a chance to grab some hundreds from there and add to the D drive? or C? 

 

Honestly, I'd be more inclined to add a SD card to use as your data drive rather than partition the SSD. And frequent backups, since SD cards do occasionally fail. But the advice Andrew gave will do the job.

 

I don't know if you'd be able to take from the System Reserved partition, and I don't think it'd be a good idea.

[Andrew 2,855]

I wouldn't worry about a few 100 MB, it's not worth messing with when you have over 200 GB free.

[T3X4S 4,530]

1 minute ago, Cosmin said:

I need an additional partition for easier organizing my stuff..do you undertand? if not.. go home. 

OK..did this.. but I'm a bit worried by the large file size allocated for system reserved..is there a chance to grab some hundreds from there and add to the D drive? or C? 

LOL -   This is the funniest thread I have read in weeks !

OK seriously - though.


Dude - I know this is your 1st time.
The reason I am going on is because you are wasting your time for something that will result in next to no difference.

Your best betstop messing around trying to put a couple grains of sand in your sandbox - it wont matter.

Now - if you were nicer - I'd tell you how to squeeze another ~5GB - but... oh well good luck with that 100MB  LOL

[Jim K 10,305]

You might be able to use EaseUS Partition Master (free) to do this.

 

That small 38GB C: partition may become an issue down the road and I would extend it out (or merge it with the D: partition).  Though, backup ... backup ... backup in case your partition table gets blasted (if you decide to do anything). 

 

I wouldn't mess with or worry about the System Reserve partition.

 

Edit: Ooooooh...I see you that you had shrunk the C drive.  Bad move IMO.   

[+Mando 5,113]

52 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

I need an additional partition for easier organizing my stuff..do you undertand? if not.. go home. 

OK..did this.. but I'm a bit worried by the large file size allocated for system reserved..is there a chance to grab some hundreds from there and add to the D drive? or C? 

its only 548mb in total with 172Mb free, not worth the effort. 38Gb as an OS drive is cutting it fine IMO, 60Gb is the minimum id recommend for OS.

[Cosmin 23]

OK guys.. so you recommend to extend C drive until ~60Gb's and leave everything like it is ? 

Another reason for having 2 partitions.. if your O.S. fails and you need to reinstall it..you will lose all your date from the one and only C drive.

[+Mando 5,113]

15 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

OK guys.. so you recommend to extend C drive until ~60Gb's and leave everything like it is ? 

Another reason for having 2 partitions.. if your O.S. fails and you need to reinstall it..you will lose all your date from the one and only C drive.

if you set it up as GPT partitions you have to nuke all partitions on the drive with each install of OS anyways  so the old "keep data on a separate partition" is a bit of a dated idea these days. I usually just use a linux live cd to recover any files on C, although i keep important data on a NAS.

 

and yep if you really must carve up the drive (i usually advise against it on SSDS) use at least 60Gb for OS, i tend to go for 100Gb OS vol these days. for servers and desktops.

[Cosmin 23]

And for increasing the file size for C drive.. I have to shrink what's needed and extend C..right? Only this..

[+Mando 5,113]

23 minutes ago, Cosmin said:

And for increasing the file size for C drive.. I have to shrink what's needed and extend C..right? Only this..

yep, pretty much.

[Cosmin 23]

Thanks a lot for your support. Any idea why it's not possible from W10 to extend C Drive? 

Edited December 16, 2017 by Cosmin

[+Mando 5,113]

nuke the D drive and youll be able to then rebuild D with remaining mate. Its because there is 2 primary partitions.

 

 

[Cosmin 23]

after all the procedure.. it's ok.. but I still have 2 primary partitions. it's ok like this? 

[Jim K 10,305]

Do you still have the 38/180 GB split?  That could become an issue down the road (for example the next big Windows 10 update).

[T3X4S 4,530]

Well - at least he's listening to suggestions.

@OP - you can't move C, until you shrink D to allow the room for C to move into.

[+Mando 5,113]

14 hours ago, Cosmin said:

after all the procedure.. it's ok.. but I still have 2 primary partitions. it's ok like this? 

yep.

 

 

[NJL 7,425]

On 16/12/2017 at 10:30 AM, Cosmin said:

Another reason for having 2 partitions.. if your O.S. fails and you need to reinstall it..you will lose all your date from the one and only C drive.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it seems.

[+Mando 5,113]

I personally lean towards single partition on each device/volume these days and do a touch of under provisioning for OS vol. These are RAID volumes hardware level, but same rule applies with AHCI drives.

 

 

 

Makes you lean towards archiving important stuff you need to keep OFF the PC altogether. NAS ftw!

 

Backup is easy, 3, 2, 1 mindset, 3 Copies, in 2 different formats and 1 completely offline (DVD-R, BD-R) 

 

 

 

 

[+goretsky 876]

Hello,

 

I, too, liked to create multiple partitions to segment files according to type/usage.  At the most extreme, I used something like this:

 

C:\ - Operating System

D:\ - Applications (basically, everything that would normally go into C:\Program Files\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\)

E:\ - Data (the My Documents  directory, plus any other data files)

F:\ - downloaded software

G:\ - Games (installation drive & directory for all the different games out there)

M:\ - first drive letter assigned to external drive

S:\ - swap file partition, or first drive letter assigned to SD cards

V:\ - Virtual Machines

 

I originally started doing this in the late 1980s or early 1990s due to a combination of issues, such as DOS not supporting partitions larger than 32MB until 4.0, plus the failure rate for drives was a lot lower back then than it is today.  This made backing up, as well as switching computers, very easy, as all I had to do was make sure the right partitions were copied/up-to-date, and I could use that computer with the latest versions of all my files.

 

These days, though, I no longer go through the effort to separate the operating system and applications onto different partitions, since (1) disks are much more reliable; and (2) the requirement for using the registry means you often just can't just run new software by creating icons for it--you have to install it first so it gets the registry entries created.

 

So, getting back to your question, given that you have a ~250GB SSD to work with, I'd suggest something along the lines of the following:

 

100GB C: - Operating system and Applications

150GB D: - Data files (including changing My Documents directory to point to this drive)

 

Then, just periodically check to see how much free space is available, and shrink/grow partitions as necessary.

 

Lastly, I would strongly suggest that you engage in a regular backup regimen, whether it be daily, weekly, or however long you think you can go between backups without it impacting your work on the computer.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky