Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Solved

Ideal partition setup

Last response: in Windows 7
Share

Best solution

Windows 7 Authority

Assuming you want to put the OS on the C drive and the data on the D drive, then size the C drive to hold the OS and your applications and the D drive for the rest. Depending on how many applications you have, 60 to 100GB is probably adequate for the C drive.

There's no law that says you NEED two parititions - you could also use just one large partition for everything. The biggest reason to use a separate C: partition for the OS is to reduce the size of an image backup of the OS. If you don't plan to do image backups of the OS then you may not need separate partitions at all.

If you're very careful about how you distribute things, you can use partitions to improve performance. But given your question I think it's probably simpler for you to use as few partitions as possible.
Windows 7 Expert

You don't have to split it at all. There's no saying that you absolutely NEED 2 partitions... just like there's no saying you only need one. It all depends on what you want to do with your hard drive.
Windows 7 Authority

A lot of notebook computers have a "recovery" partition which can't be deleted or changed. Such partitions typically contain stuff that allows you to recover from a trashed OS. That's separate from your other partitions and shouldn't affect how much you allocate for the OS. In other words, my comment of 60 to 100GB depends only on how much space you're going to use for the OS and applications, whether or not you have a recovery partition makes no difference.
Ask the community
!