Partitions in Hard Drive--Why/How to Use?

I have an Asus NX90Jq with a 907 GB hard drive separated into four partitions as follows:

C: 116 GB with only 4.19 GB free
D: 327 GB empty
E: 232 GB empty
F: 232 GB empty

This is the first hard drive that I have had that has had partitions and I don't know why there are partitions; what to do with them; or how to use them.

As you can see, C is almost full with the other three empty. What little I have heard is that the fuller a hard drive is, that it can slow down the computer.

Do I need to do anything or will the other partitions be used once C is completely full?

Any info will be appreciated.

 

I would take your hard drive and worked for an hour with it to make it look OK.
It is insane! You have four partitions and you don't even know how to use them.

I recommend you to use 2 partitions if you have 4 GB of ram or more. I you have less then I would think to do 3 partitions but I am not sure if I would. Anyway how much of RAM do you have?

What Windows do you use? People, give us MORE INFO. We don't like to google your laptop model specs.

How many HDDs do you have? Is it 1 for sure? Is it 2 in RAID? Or just 2 hard drives. Go to Device manager and look there how many drives do you have. Or use HDTune.

Tell me all I need and I will tell you how to use HDD more efficiently.

For now... 2 partitions is good for everyday user.

 

Personally, i would venture that he has two HDDs. Asus splits their drives in two partitions as the factory default. That was the case for my G73. I would advise you to merge partitions C & D and partitions E & F to have 443GB and 464GB. This is the bare minimum i would do, after that if you want to go for the partition for performance approach, it is up to you.

 

Sorry, I didn't think to include more info. I am not that computer literate.

Anyway, according to the Device Manager, I have 2 hard drives WDC WD 5000BEKT-80KA9TI.

I have 12 gigs of RAM with Windows 7 64 bit and I7 CPU.

tijo, you mentioned merging the partitions. How, in very simple terms, would I do that?

Thanks,

Dan

PS

When I open Computer, it shows 5 hard drives:
OS (C
DATA(D
SDATA1(F
SDATA2(G
Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010 (Protected)(Q

 

Dan the safest way to re partition is to backup your entire system to an external hard drive. Make sure you do not have any files you need on D (327 GIG), once they are backed up extending C drive to (327 + 116) will destroy all data on D
Then use this video as a guide.
How to Resize a Hard Drive from within Windows 7 - YouTube

 

You can use a gparted livecd (or an ubuntu live cd/liveusb with unetbootin) or download EASEUS partition manager home edition for free to merge your partitions.

If your 2nd hard drive partitions are empty, do those first, and then back up your system partition onto there in case anything goes wrong while you are merging the first disk.

 

JOSEA and ALLurGroceries, I have read your replies and trying to understand them, but what I tried to ask in my original question, do I have to do anything? As I mentioned, I am not all that computer literate and in trying to do something that may not be required, I could make things a lot worse.

Does it matter if the hard drives are partitioned or not? And if it makes a difference, why does Asus make them this way?

What difference does merging them make?

After C: is filled up, will the computer start using D:?

Thanks

 

It will not automatically start using the D: partition. If you are running out of space you need to merge the C: partition into the D: partition (so that C: becomes the size of both combined), or move some data from C: to another partition to free up space.

 

Texsinbad, you should listen to me

1. yes you really have to do smth with this beause if Windows starts to manage what partitions to use then it will be a disaster for all skilled users. Next step gonna be that windows 7 decides what should we eat on breakfast.

2. As smart people said you really should merge partitions on 2-nd HDD. Push StART button and type format then you will see little upper a shortcut to format and change partitions of hard drives. choose it. (check again that your partitions SDATA1 and SDATA2 are empty in my computer) After this right click on one of them in opened window and choose delete. Same for 2-nd. Then right click on that grey space and choose create partition. Set NTFS and cluster size about 16KB or 32 KB.

After that type in start menu word Intel. If there will be some tool shown up tell me its name.

This is only a beginning. Next time I will tell you how to force windows to use that partitions.

 

Honestly, all the OP needs to do is merge partitions C and D together and E and F together if he fears he'll be lacking HDD space. As long as there is nothing on D, he can merge C and D safely without fear of loosing data. The different partition setups he can do afterwards are optional. Are there benefits, sure, should he start doing that now, i'd say no. If you want to learn what partitioning for performance means, i'll find and link the guide for that. It is a bit advanced as far as partition managing goes though.

To merge the partitions, i would use either the windows disk management if there is no data on the 2nd partitions on each drives. gparted live is much more powerful, but a little more complicated. It will allow you to merge partitions with data on them, but you still run the risk of loosing some. Parted magic is also a nice utility, it includes the linux partition editor with additional tools too. Both will fit on a cd, gparted is more lightweight though and will load faster from the disc though.

 

Dan please see the private message I sent you. You may be able to a gain a considerable amount of space just moving the page file to a drive other than C. If you need help with the partitioning, or page file moving let me know.

 

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I will have to read and reread them to try to understand them and how to do them.

For now, I moved a folder with videos of about 60 gigs from C to D, which freed up half of my C drive. For my computer use, this may be all that I need to do.

Thanks Again

 

Dan i believe they partition so that Windows will be in C partition, D,E,F are for programs or data. If you need to reinstall your OS you can do so and not worry about losing data, or programs.
Merging can alievate space issues (But as you proved is not the only way to free up space).