How should a harddrive be partitioned?

Just got a new computer and made the recovery disks. It now has two partitions, C and D. C only has 74GB with 45GB full. D is completely empty. Is this normal? Is there any reason to even have the two instead of one? Thanks

I don't think there's a way to combine your partitions without reinstalling your OS, so you'll have to install games and programs to the D drive.DJ_Lae

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So it seems like a lot of people have 1 partition for just the OS, now on my C drive it has the program files on it, should that be moved? This hardware forum seems like were the nice people of GameSpot go to, it's weird.

I see absolutely no benefit to having more than one partition per disk, but I know other people feel differently. However, I don't think there's a way to combine your partitions without reinstalling your OS, so you'll have to install games and programs to the D drive.DJ_Lae

[QUOTE="DJ_Lae"]I see absolutely no benefit to having more than one partition per disk, but I know other people feel differently. However, I don't think there's a way to combine your partitions without reinstalling your OS, so you'll have to install games and programs to the D drive.Frenzyd109

I thought of another question, what about backups? The computer is telling me that I need to set up a back up. But what is the point of setting up a backup to the same hdd that they are already on?brandon2802

But - Ever since I got Win7 Ultimate x64 , I have never had to Reformat and install ? XP - seemed like I had to Reformat/install every 6months or so. Win7 is doing great!

If you are not a technical person (as in you don't so this for your job, like me) forget about partitioning your drive. Rather, use the Windows 7 Backup and Restore Center to regularly create an image of your machine. Mine does this every Sunday night. So, if ever you end up with a virus or OS corruption, just revert back to the previous image. It's really easy to do with Win 7 Backup and Restore Center and is non technical. Creating partitions always sounds good in the beginning, but what are you going to do when your machine starts running slowly because there is not enough space on the OS partition for the paging file? Are you going to want to troubleshoot that to figure out how to move it to another partition? Or what if the partitions need to be resized and your are an XP user who did not factor the amount of space needed for updates and service packs? These are the problems I hear all the time from disgruntled users out of their league. There are better ways of maintaining security and that is with Acronis in XP and Windows Backup and Restore Center in 7. Forget about partitions for security if you don't understand how they work or their implications. You will just piss yourself off 6 months from now.

Don't use partitions I have 6 hard discs