New Asus, Hard Drive Questions!

Hi!
Just bought a f8sp off of newegg, loving it so far! Two questions, and please forgive me for being technologically ignorant. I'm also brand new to Windows (used to be a Mac person)

1) (Minor Question) I accidentally nudged/bumped my laptop once while in use, hard drives aren't THAT sensitive, are they ?

2) This is the main thing I need help with. My hard drive is apparently already partitioned into two. The first is labeled Vista OS, and the other is Data. The Data is empty. My first question is why, and my second question is how do I merge it into one! Again, I'm new to windows, so sorry for my ignorance.

Also, do I need an external fan control program, or will the defaults keep me cool enough?


Loving my machine so far, thanks for the help!

 

laptop hard drives can take a real beating.. i know mine has taken some rough falls while running and it still works. Just dont go throwing it around now

Usually when a computer comes with two partitions, one is for recovery and the other is for normal usage. However, since you say one is empty (how do you know this by the way?) I dont know why they would be partitioned this way. How you can merge them is using vistas built in partitioning tool. If you right click on my computer and select manage, then select disk management on the left side, there will be a partitioner in there somewhere (i dont have vista access right now so i cant tell you exactly where it is).

edit: i guess i should warn you that using this partitioner improperly can delete everything, so make sure you know what your doing first.

 

1. No, hard drives are not that sensitive, just be careful, especially when your computer is on and your hard drive is active (doing a virus scan)
2. Click on the Vista orb on the bottom right and type computer management. click on the first result and double click on disk management. i am sure that you can delete that partition.

 

Yeah I thought it was a recovery partition too at first, but it's the same size as the "vista OS" one, and i know it's empty because I looked at it in Computer

Thanks, about to do it right now!

 

a lot of asus latops come with 2 partitions. there's pros and cons to that. the 3rd partition, the recovery partition is hidden and shouldn't be seen.

 

The deletion process worked great! Now I have 160gb "unallocated", how do I get that into the other 160gb "Vista OS" drive that has everything on it?

Nevermind, just figured it out with a bit of playing around. Who says windows isn't intuitive!?

 

congrats on getting it going and all together.

and yes, windows is great because its customizable and versatile.

 

Also, one last dumb question. Hopefully someone is still reading this thred! My new laptop has a few stickers on the keyboard side of things. One annoying one advertising the webcam, and another with my computer's specifications, that appears to have a barcode. I started to peel the latter off, but as I got a corner I realized it might be one of those things I shouldn't remove. I know it's paranoid, but they won't deny me my warranty or anything if it's gone, right? Or do I have to keep it on? Thanks again for you time! I've searched the forums and seen some generic answers, but I thought I'd ask you Asus-specific folks first!

 

Nope, your warranty is only voided if you go taking off the stickers on the inside of the laptop near the CPU and GPU.

Actually I have a question of my own too XD. how would I make the recovery partition invisible again? It became visible under computer after I installed Ubuntu...

 

Kill the stickers aargh!

I actually recommend against running with a single partition. Like that, all the data will be in the same place as the system files, and will be put in jeopardy by OS failures. + other disadvantages.

It's simply a better strategy to run with 2 partitions, 1 OS and apps, 1 data. I can't see what the cons to that are, except if you're setting the size incorrectly and get a lot of unused space on one, while the other one is getting full.

chipmoney:
There is a "hidden" toggle for that partition, PartitionMagic can set it I believe. Other good partitioning tools should do it, as well (qtParted)?