6920G partitions

My hard drive either has 2 partitions or I have 2 hard drives. When I move a file from a place to another on the same partition, it's instantaneous, even if it's big, because I guess all Windows is doing is relabelling the file's location. When I do the same between partitions though, it takes a while. Does this mean it's actually 2 physical drives, because if it's 2 partitions, shouldn't moving files between the partitions be a mere relabelling of the file's location and therefore instantaneous?

 

Download HD Tune or PC Wizard 2008, and see how many HDDs are there.

 

Fred, the 6920G only has room for one hard drive in the case. The two partitions are on the same physical hard drive, but since they're viewed as different virtual hard drive by Windows, it actually has to read and write the files from one partition to the other. It's silly, I know - which is why I nuked the D: partition when I upgraded to Vista Ultimate.
(It also had the nifty side effect of stopping the Acer Arcade Instant-On function, which means no more loss of System Restore points! Yey!)

 

it's 1 drive divided into 2 visible partitions C: & D: and an invisible partition which has the image of the FACTORY RESTORE CDs on it..

when moving a file from one location to another on the same drive, windows just changes the information in the FILE ALLOCATION TABLE (FAT style patritions) or the Master File Table (NTFS style partitions). so it's only updating the file's information in the FAT or MFT (such as what folder it belongs in)

when moving from one partition to a different partition on the same drive or onto a second drive, the entire file must be moved bit by bit and the file info in the FILE ALLOCATION TABLE or MASTER FILE TABLE must also be updated (on both the source and destination FATs or MFTs depending on how the drive was partitoned and formatted.