System and Data on same Hard Drive?
 

My friend has just bought a new computer, actually a well specified ex display Dell, from Currys. I have just had a look at it. The hard disk (I presume there is only one) is partitioned into two drives- a C(OS) drive, being a nominal 450Gb, and a D(Recovery) drive, which is 14.9Gb.

Now, my own set-up, totalling 1Tb, consists of three hard drives- C being 200Gb, and F and G, which are each 400Gb. My C drive is used for system and programmes, with the others being, respectively, my data and backup drives. That way, I know that, in the event of a crash, my data is safe.

I have reservations about my friend’s system and data being on the same drive. Am I being over-cautious?

Nope, not over cautious

Well, I also use multi drives, but as long as your friend backs up regularly he should be ok. If not happy, put 2 more drives in - they are cheap!

That can be quite a pain with Dell machines - never any spare power or data connectors, often a psu rated only for what came in the box, etc.,etc..

Go for ext USB drive then.

Agreed - backups are the way to go. You don't need a backup program, just sync data to an external drive using something like Microsoft SyncToy.

If you backup, I don't see a problem with OS and data on the same drive, because you don't always know in advance how much space you need for each. These days Windows is more like UNIX, in that it tries to enforce a clear separation between the OS and user data, using permissions rather than partitions.

Bear in mind that some manufacturers put the OS and Software recovery files on the smaller partition, to recover the computer if disaster strikes. Saves them having to supply CD's.

I don't think you can ever be too cautious when it comes to backing up.

Which is why all my data is backed up on a Western Digital Passport external hard drive.
This proved invauluable when my old laptop died the death with no warning. I bought a new one and just copied everything back on to it. Simples! :ok:

I always keep data and OS separate, preferably on different physical drives.

And son-father-grandfather data backups on a different machine under a different OS.

:ok: