C drive/D drive

The Witches Cat

Hi
I checked the remaining memory on my computer today. It tells me there is 55.7GB remaining on my C drive and 292GB remaining on my D drive.
Is it possible to start using this D drive?? What is it for exactly? Can I transfer stuff over to it or use it for future downloads?
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Edups

No.
It is your recovery drive and do not attemp to put files in it.

If you're running low on space buy a new hardrive or store some non essential files in the cloud or on a USB stick.

Cortina_MK_IV

Your operating system is stored/running off the C:/ drive. I'd be using an external drive for storage for safety.

The Witches Cat

Edups wrote: »

No.
It is your recovery drive and do not attemp to put files in it.

If you're running low on space buy a new hardrive or store some non essential files in the cloud or on a USB stick.

Thanks for that.

Edups

Cortina_MK_IV wrote: »

Your operating system is stored/running off the C:/ drive. I'd be using an external drive for storage for safety.

Unless you're storing valuable information I wouldn't bother with an external drive.

LeinsterDub

Edups wrote: »

No.
It is your recovery drive and do not attemp to put files in it.

If you're running low on space buy a new hardrive or store some non essential files in the cloud or on a USB stick.

What are you talking about? There is no way a recovery drive is 300gb. Let alone has 300 gb free.

Edups

LeinsterDub wrote: »

What are you talking about? There is not way a recovery drive is 300gb. Let alone has 300 gb free.

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

choons

Edups wrote: »

No.
It is your recovery drive and do not attemp to put files in it.

If you're running low on space buy a new hardrive or store some non essential files in the cloud or on a USB stick.

Not really true!! There may be a recovery backup on the D drive but it is perfectly good to store files on at the same time.

Photos, music, videos, documents etc. Are fine to move as long as your applications know where to access them. Do not move program or application files.

55gb free on a C drive is grand for now, if it gets down to 20gb then you could move stuff.

Edups

choons wrote: »

Not really true!! There may be a recovery backup on the D drive but it is perfectly good to store files on at the same time.

Photos, music, videos, documents etc. Are fine to move as long as your applications know where to access them. Do not move program or application files.

55gb free on a C drive is grand for now, if it gets down to 20gb then you could move stuff.

No you shouldn't. Storing files on the recovery partition can cause the process to fail if your software crashes and needs recovery. OP unless you're happy to bin your computer if it stops working right don't touch the / drive

LeinsterDub

Edups wrote: »

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

I had a drive on my windows 98 boxes that were not recovery drives. I'm unaware of any convention that D is 'reserved' like A and B in the past. Recovery drives are generally d because it's the next letter after c but I certainly wouldn't automatically assume a D drive is a recovery drive

LeinsterDub

Edups wrote: »

No you shouldn't. Storing files on the recovery partition can cause the process to fail if your software crashes and needs recovery. OP unless you're happy to bin your computer if it stops working right don't touch the / drive

Why would they need to bin there computer? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing indeed

Ash.J.Williams

A recovery drive is usually only a few gb. Your PC is probably set up with a partition with the OS installed on drive C and drive D left free for data. Of course an external backup is advisable but your D drive was probably set up for data storage.

choons

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

A recovery drive is usually only a few gb. You're PC is probably set up with a partition with the OS installed on drive C and drive D left free for data. Of course an external backup is advisable but your D drive was probably set up for data storage.

Yep

Fionn

Is it a physical extra drive? or just a partition of one drive. Look at the contents of your \ that should tell you what it's for, use Windows Disk Management to see all drives and partitions in the system, 300 Gb would seem a pretty large allocation for recovery as a typical Win 10 even after upgrade wouldn't be more than 14 Gb in total.

One way of preserving your recovery drive or even all drives on your computer, is to use a program like Macrium Reflect Free and take an image of your complete system, store on external media so that you can always load it back up again.

Flaccus

What Fionn said.

And the drive can be a partition of you main drive or another physical drive. The recovery files don't even have to be there. Traditionally d: is the data partition or drive (lots of pc manufacturers set it up that way) but again doesn't have to be. Plus most manufacturers hide the factory recovery partition from the user anyway and it's accessed through recovery mode (which in windows 10 you can boot directly to or it can be accessed from startup menu (F8 or F12 on some PC's). Also the quite separate windows re partition for restoring windows 10 is always hidden and again can be accessed from your windows setup media, windows pe media, or from within recovery mode. There is no fear of damaging this unless you are handy with the diskpart utility or mess around in windows disk management.

My advice is if you are low on space to store data, then just use the partition. If for some reason it contains the recovery files, just don't delete them. However in my opinion based on what I said in the previous paragraph, it's highly unlikely this is used for any form of recovery unless you are running an ancient windows 98 or earlier setup.

FanadMan

Edups wrote: »

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

I'd do that or else ask for your tutor to be sacked. Do you know if there is a third hidden partition that is used for recovery? A lot of computers were set up with multiple partitions and some of them were hidden to prevent users deleting recovery data.

As for the OP using their drive for backup, it should be perfectly fine. Even if it is a recovery drive, it will be ok. In the event of a full recovery, a lot of systems will not wipe the recovery drive, only the C: drive so your data should be safe. ** Not all manufacturers follow this so check first **

If you have valuable data, back it up. If it is really important, back it up again to cloud, external drives, DVDs etc. As the saying goes, "Jesus saves, but nerds do backups"

ItHurtsWhenIP

Edups wrote: »

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

I would just like to fully agree with @FanadMan. After 25+ years working in IT, the advice I have seen you have provide the OP was not good and for example this:

Edups wrote: »

Unless you're storing valuable information I wouldn't bother with an external drive.

was simply wrong.

Anybody's data is important and backing things up using the 3-2-1 rule would require some external device. @Fionn's suggestion of Macrium Reflect is an excellent way of taking full disk images and is what I use myself. I originally backed up to a large external drive, but now use a NAS as my storage requirements have grown.

@The Witches Cat - please ignore the posts from @Edups on this topic. It was bad advice.

lawred2

Edups wrote: »

No.
It is your recovery drive and do not attemp to put files in it.

If you're running low on space buy a new hardrive or store some non essential files in the cloud or on a USB stick.

It could be anything. Depends on the machine configuration. I suspect it's nothing but a data partition on the disk.

I would seriously doubt that it's a recovery partition.

lawred2

Edups wrote: »

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

Drive letters are a convention only. In reality they carry no semantic meaning or purpose.

Sure many domestic PCs sold in the last few decades would have used the convention d for optical drives not recovery drives.

Orion

Edups wrote: »

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

Maybe update it. Recovery partitions these days are hidden partitions. D is just a storage drive like any other.

Orion

Edups wrote: »

Unless you're storing valuable information I wouldn't bother with an external drive.

I wouldn't bother with an external drive anyway. I store valuable information in cloud storage so even if my house burns down I don't lose it.

ItHurtsWhenIP

Orion wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with an external drive anyway. I store valuable information in cloud storage so even if my house burns down I don't lose it.

What happens when Ransomware scrambles the data in the cloud? :eek:

I know somebody whose business was shut down for 4 weeks while their cloud storage provider struggled to restore their data.

Orion

ItHurtsWhenIP wrote: »

What happens when Ransomware scrambles the data in the cloud? :eek:

I know somebody whose business was shut down for 4 weeks while their cloud storage provider struggled to restore their data.

You could say exactly the same about your home storage. In any event I have it synced locally.

Jodotman

Edups wrote: »

No you shouldn't. Storing files on the recovery partition can cause the process to fail if your software crashes and needs recovery. OP unless you're happy to bin your computer if it stops working right don't touch the / drive

Bin your computer? :pac::pac::rolleyes::rolleyes:

lawred2

That IT cert must have involved coupons from a cornflakes box

ItHurtsWhenIP

Orion wrote: »

You could say exactly the same about your home storage. In any event I have it synced locally.

Very true. However when I was backing up on external hard drives, they were disconnected after backups are complete.

Now with the NAS, the volume I am backing up to is completely locked out (all access to every User ID is revoked). I then grant access when a backup is required) and the Desktop or Laptop being backed up, is not used for anything else when the backup is running. Access is revoked immediately after the backup.

I too have my critical data backed up to the cloud in case if fire.

riclad

The recovery partition is usually hidden , for windows 7 its 10-15gig,
You can see it from control panel,admistration tools , storage .
drive d.or e. it might be listed recovery.
it stores a copy of windows os,which can be restored if for instance you get A bad virus on drive c, or basic bootup drives are deleted,windows will no longer load ,even in safe mode.
my advice is drive d says 2300gig free space .
than use it for music, photo files, movies .
leave the hidden partition as it is .

Skatedude

Only a complete moron would setup a computer with a recovery drive of 300 gigs, It's very common now to have 2 or more partitions or drives on computers.
It's normal for the recovery partition to be hidden so people wont use it until it's actually needed.
Go ahead and use the D drive for storage or programs as needed.

ED E

Edups wrote: »

Sorry I'll shred my IT cert because they must have changed the use of drives and not told me. How stupid of me.

Yes you should, you're talking out your arse.


Recovery is most likely an unmounted partition, is the "data" partition by the classic style of user content and OS separation (So when you want to do a clean install there's no backup requirement).

riclad

its more logical to use c for programs and have a large d partition for user data,music,photo,s ,videos .
Most windows programs expect to be installed in c:/programs .
If partition d fills up it won,t slow down the os.
Windows works best with at least 5gig free space on drive c.

The Witches Cat

Fionn wrote: »

Is it a physical extra drive? or just a partition of one drive. Look at the contents of your \ that should tell you what it's for, use Windows Disk Management to see all drives and partitions in the system, 300 Gb would seem a pretty large allocation for recovery as a typical Win 10 even after upgrade wouldn't be more than 14 Gb in total.

One way of preserving your recovery drive or even all drives on your computer, is to use a program like Macrium Reflect Free and take an image of your complete system, store on external media so that you can always load it back up again.

So is that unusual that I have 292gb free on D drive??