Dual Drives on PC

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Diana

New Member
I would like to know if anyone can tell me what is the purpose of having 2 drives on my PC? My technician is being difficult and won't explain why he did this to my PC. He just says that Data D: is for back up... This I understand. What I don't understand... What is it backing up, if my documents in drive C: and my documents in drive D: are not seeing each others changes? It's confusing to have different versions of the same documents on my PC. Also, he put most of the memory on the D: drive, which is frustrating... As all the links to "My Documents" are going to the C: drive.By the way, there is only one physical hard drive in the PC... Basically my PC now has C; and D; on it. And, I don't know why, or how I'm supposed to use them. Please HELP!
 
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do you know this tech personally?
i usually do this for people for whom i repeatedly have to reload the os. it's called partitioning the hard drive. it is done when only a single drive is available to keep data files separate from system files. if the system becomes corrupt or gets infected, the tech can simply reload the os without damaging your data files; you should routinely copy/move your important files to the D drive. it is basically to make his job easier :)
 
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Thanks for the info... I don't know him on a personal level, only work related. He loaded the wrong operating system on my PC... Windows XP Home, instead of Windows XP Professional. When he took the machine back to re do the whole thing, maybe that had something to do with him not wanting to explain things to me... You know... a little embarrassed for such a mistake. Anyway, after I posted this, I did some more research online, and finally figured it out. So now he tells me my machine will be done with only one partition, which is fine. I have 2 external drives to back up my data. He's a great tech, and definitely knows what he's doing... Has saved me a lot of money, and given excellent advice. I guess he's not into explaining a whole lot to just regular folks that aren't that tech savvy. So now I have to figure out if I want to take the good with the bad when it comes to using him again. And actually, if I really want my hard drive partitioned, it looks like it's something I can do on my own.
 
Having your hard drive partitioned is actually a very good thing. I do it with all my customers computers as well. If i'm gonna be working on them when they crash then I want things to go easy on me. But, always back up your data to an external as well as the drive thats in your system. You never know when the hard drive will go out on you and the data will be unrecoverable.
 
yeah, some normal folk would benefit from hard drive partitions. but the best solution would be to have a secondary hard drive or an external backup solution. i used to partition my hard drives, but would soon run out of space.
 
I suppose I never saw the purpose of having partitions because 99% of the time I've seen, they are unused and the primary partition fills up. Our video editing computer at school was like this. It had a 10GB boot partition, 30GB data/programs partition, and 2x80GB RAID for videos. Any guess where most of the files ended up?

On top of this... Yes, it could help if you have some kind of software failure and you must reload. However, it is still all on the same disk, so hardware failure or simple ignorance could just as easily wipe both partitions clean.

Now...to each their own...but for me, I partition my drives to 100% their full size. My new computer has a 500GB just for data and backups, PLUS I keep vital data saved on DVDs and external drives. This way there are multiple levels to fall back on...
 
Wow, lots of good stuff you guys are talking about... And I think The_Other_One is right by saying that ignorance could just as easily wipe both partitions clean, as well as filling up the primary... Especially when the PC user has no knowledge of partitions or what they're used for. Like I said... My tech guy is good, but he seems like he can be a D**K. Maybe he just assumed I should have already known what to do with a partitioned hard drive, and felt it was beneath him to explain. At least I'm figuring it out now. Looks like I need to find a new guy... Something tells me it's more difficult and expensive to work on a drive that's not partitioned, so he's thinking he'll stick it to me next time by creating only one partition now... Whereas his whole deal was that he always does 2 partitions... But was kind of a jerk when I asked him to tell me how to use them. Anybody Know a good computer guy in Northern California... The East Bay, if possible?
 
One more thing... Here's a perfect example of ignorance not knowing how to use a partitioned hard drive... On top of my 2 external drives, I use Carbonite as an online backup. Well... because my tech guy didn't explain about the 2 partitions, only my primary was backed up online... So when I logged on to retrieve my data and put it on my laptop while my desktop was getting fixed... Nothing was there! I'm so glad I have 2 externals also!!!

By the way, my desktop didn't crash. When I tried to turn it on, I would get a black screen with this message kinda like "System32 file missing... reinsert disk"... or something like that. Funny thing though, I was able to get into the PC in safe mode and see all of my documents just fine. Anybody ever heard of that issue before? This is how my tech guy ended up redoing my whole system... He couldn't figure out what that problem was. And that's how I ended up with the wrong operating system when he gave it back to me. And now he's putting in the correct operating system, but now with one partition... Hmm, he's either overworked, or just plain slippin'
 
Diana -

I've been wondering about Carbonite myself - how user friendly, how efficient, how invasive, etc?

$5 per month seems like a small price to pay for security.

Are you happy with the program thus far?

Anyone else have any experiences or opinions they'd like to share?

thx,
 
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