How to correctly setup my laptop drive..

[goretsky Supervisor]

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