Hard drive partition--C and D

[Milestones]

I may not get solutions, but I'm wondering if anyone has had a computer with a partitioning like this. 

On my new computer, C is the smaller part at about 100 GB.  D is huge at 900 GB.  Data files are supposed to go into D--pics, Word files, music files.  The problem is everything seems to default to C.  I made many attempts and managed to get music into D (which is a big chunk), as well as some pictures.  But I'm  having trouble getting anything else in there.  I have Word files going into C and/or D.

The whole thing is nonsensical to me.  I know there is supposed to be a way to remove the partition, but I don't know if have the confidence to do that.

Anyone here ever face this problem?

 

[lipi]

If this is a computer newly bought, I suspect that it's actually two physical drives, not two partitions on one drive. Most computers you are likely to buy will have a primary SSD (smaller, fast) and a secondary HDD (big, slower). The C will be the SSD—the OS will live on that, as will any applications you use frequently and any documents that require very fast disk access (if you do any video editing, this is the place you'll want to store your video files). So the first thing to check is whether you have two drives or two partitions on one drive. You can tell using System Information or whatever MS decided to call the control panel, or you can check your sales receipt and see whether it lists two drives or one.

If it is indeed one physical drive with two partitions, you can remove the partition (i.e., repartition the drive) you have to reinstall the OS. You will lose all data on the drive when you do so (so back up). It may not be worth the hassle.

Regardless of the 1-or-2 drive situation, it should be fairly simple to set D as the default for Word and any other software you use. (I'd give you exact instructions, but I have been fortunate enough not to have to touch Windows in years. Find yourself a young computer-literate fellow or lass, and have them do it for you.)

Re: Word in particular: don't worry too much about it writing to C. Word documents are tiny compared to the size of the OS and whatever else lives on C. You won't notice a difference. (Or, to put it another way, by the time the cumulative mass of Word docs starts to matter, you have bigger problems.)

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I have a PC at home with a small SSD boot disc and I'm pretty sure that it does not show up in my list of drives at all. The only place I can see it is in the Administrative Tools of the PC, which is not an area I'd recommend poking around in unless you know what you're doing. I believe that for this boot disc on my Dell PC, there is some Intel driver loaded onto the machine that specifies that little (16 GB) drive as a boot drive and it executes something during boot to look there first. Only operating system files go into this little drive on my system. My C: drive is a regular 1 TB hard drive and everything - applications, data, music, etc. - goes there.

It may be that whoever formatted your hard drive set up this boot sector. I haven't seen that in ages. I seem to remember it being popular for while. I had one machine like this and you are right, everything you install goes to that little boot sector. It was a pain.

[JSngry]

The guy who built my current machine labeled the SSD as C:\ and both it and its contents are fully visible. He was also very insistent that I understand to not store data on the SSD, because doing so will be a drag on its functionality and true usefulness, which is simply to hold all apps, including booting files. Data storage is not its forte. But the drive is there, C;\ and if I wanted to play on it, I certainly could.

As far as the OP's questions, it seems unlikely that you're seeing two drives without having two devices. If you're using Windows 10 (and I probably hope you are), you can make the D:\ drive your default storages: https://www.howtogeek.com/245706/how-to-change-the-default-hard-drive-for-saving-documents-and-apps-in-windows-10/ with no difficulty (once you know where to go to do it).

In the old(er) days, it was normal to set up a virtual portion on the same device, wither to use as a swap file or some other kind of need (none of which I can think of at this time). But now that the HDs are all space age ginomous/fast and shit, that's no longer a thing, is it?

[jlhoots]

Glad I don't use Windows.

[JSngry]

[lipi]

11 hours ago, JSngry said:

In the old(er) days, it was normal to set up a virtual portion on the same device, wither to use as a swap file or some other kind of need (none of which I can think of at this time). But now that the HDs are all space age ginomous/fast and shit, that's no longer a thing, is it?

It is still a thing. Laptops, for instance, usually have one drive slot. If you want to run two operating systems natively (that is, not in a virtual machine like VMware) you will need two partitions. If you want to run Linux or BSD on your laptop, you will also need two partitions, since they use a separate swap partition. (Windows, for historical reasons, does not. It uses a file. There are drawbacks to this, which is why Linux doesn't do it that way.)

12 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I have a PC at home with a small SSD boot disc and I'm pretty sure that it does not show up in my list of drives at all.

This is a different (early) use of SSD, when the drives were expensive. This should not be the way things work on any modern machine.