Question Getting New Workstation. Should I partition NVME ?

[dan99t]

Hi,
I am getting a new Dell Workstation 5820 with following specs.
Intel Xeon W-2235
2 NVME each 512 GB
Win-11 Pro on one NVME

It will come with Win-11 with no partitions.

(1) My question is should I Partition that drive & if yes how ?
(2) What precautions should I take ? Dell does not give Win-11 on any media like Flash Drive or DVD.
So should I just clone one NVME to the 2nd one as a precaution ?
(3) Does Win-11 come with Antivirus & OR Anti malware ? If yes then how good is it ?
(4) Should I install a 3rd party Antivirus ? I have been using ESET Internet security on other system.

Thank You

 

[rgd1101]

1)no
2)do your own recovery disk
3)good enough unless you are go out of your way to do something

 

[USAFRet]

1. No. Verify that Dell has not done something silly with the two drives, like a RAID array of some sort.
2. Institute a good backup routine (see link below). Do NOT simply clone from one drive to the other.
3. Windows Defender is as good or better than most.
4. See #3.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[dan99t]

1)no

So win-11 will take approximately 25 GB & applications another 50 GB totaling 75 GB & one of my app stores data on C: drive & takes up 50 GB. That is 125 GB. NVME is 512 GB that leaves 512-125 = 387 GB of free space. I usually clone the drives for back Up especially the Windows drive.
Can you please explain why leave so much free space ?
Also would it cut down or enlarge the clonning time ?
Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

So win-11 will take approximately 25 GB & applications another 50 GB totaling 75 GB & one of my app stores data on C: drive & takes up 50 GB. That is 125 GB. NVME is 512 GB that leaves 512-125 = 387 GB of free space. I usually clone the drives for back Up especially the Windows drive.
Can you please explain why leave so much free space ?
Also would it cut down or enlarge the clonning time ?
Thanks

Partitioning that drive serves little purpose. It is still the same size.

Cloning - This is for changing drives right now.
Images are for backups. And Images allow full use of the rest of the drive, and can be incrementally updated.