Partitioning my HD

[rszanti]

I have a 1Tb hard drive running on a Windows 10, 64bit machine. I want to partition the Drive. I clicked through "File Explorer" to get to "Disk Management". At the "Disk Management" window, a "Disk 0 Basic" is displayed showing 931Gb (with partitions of 300Mb recovery, 99Mb EFI system, 930Gb boot, etc, and another 450Gb recovery). If I am reading the instructive article "How to make Partitions in Windows 10" correctly, I should click on the "NTFS" section and "Shrink Volume". I do want to leave enough room for upgrades, etc. to the Windows software. I also planned on creating a partition just for non MS software (such as games and Wordperfect and so on). Then using the remainder for data. Am I correct in choosing the NTFS segment and what is a reasonable size to shrink to (the shrink function suggests 464Gb) ?

 

[Hlsgsz]

Windows will nto let you resize the system drive.
Use, this. As a bonus it's much more intuitive.
As for sizes, only you know what you need, but i recommend 2 partitions, adn two partitions only: one for windows and all installed programs, gmaes, etc, and one for data. The idea is that the sys drive should not keep any data that you can;t lose, so, in case of a virus or othe trouble, you just wipe the sys drive and do a fresh install.

EDIT: link: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

[USAFRet]

(with partitions of 300Mb recovery, 99Mb EFI system, 930Gb boot, etc, and another 450Gb recovery)

That does not fit in a 1TB drive.

That "450" is actually 450MB, not GB.

Personally, I'm not a real fan of partitioning individual drives.
Multiple physical drives for different purposes are a much better solution.

But, if you want...
That main partition, 930GB, split it in half. ~450GB each.
1 partition for the OS and applications, 1 partition for other stuff.

More than that, and you will be wasting some space.

Let's examine a typical 1TB drive, split into 3 partitions.
C partition - 200GB for the OS and applications (90GB free space)
D partition - 200GB for games (50GB free space)
E partition - 530GB (the rest) for other stuff (400GB free space)

You wish to install a game that takes up 60GB. GTA V, perhaps.
Even though you have ~550GB theoretical free space on that physical drive, you cannot install that game into your 'game' partition.
So you install it on the E partition. Completely negating the thought of devoting a single partition for your games.

If that drive were all one partition, you would not run up against that space limit.

 

[cirdecus]

You may be able to shrink it. However, USAFR is right, partitions aren't a great idea. I suggest two separate drives, one for programs and games and the other for all data, media, etc.

 

[Hlsgsz]

(with partitions of 300Mb recovery, 99Mb EFI system, 930Gb boot, etc, and another 450Gb recovery)

That does not fit in a 1TB drive.

That "450" is actually 450MB, not GB.

Personally, I'm not a real fan of partitioning individual drives.
Multiple physical drives for different purposes are a much better solution.

But, if you want...
That main partition, 930GB, split it in half. ~450GB each.
1 partition for the OS and applications, 1 partition for other stuff.

More than that, and you will be wasting some space.

Let's examine a typical 1TB drive, split into 3 partitions.
C partition - 200GB for the OS and applications (90GB free space)
D partition - 200GB for games (50GB free space)
E partition - 530GB (the rest) for other stuff (400GB free space)

You wish to install a game that takes up 60GB. GTA V, perhaps.
Even though you have ~550GB theoretical free space on that physical drive, you cannot install that game into your 'game' partition.
So you install it on the E partition. Completely negating the thought of devoting a single partition for your games.

If that drive were all one partition, you would not run up against that space limit.

Indeed. Odd how this notion has managed to survive from the 90s.

 

[rszanti]

The 450Gb/450Mb .... my mental slip 🙂

I too prefer multiple drives as a solution but are an expense I can't hack at this time. My reason for the partitions - I defrag regularly to minimize hunt time and since the data usually is the biggest offender I like to keep it separate to reduce defrag time.

 

[USAFRet]

Reducing defrag time seems to be a very odd reason to partition a drive.
Just leave the system on overnight once a week. Let it do that thing while you sleep.


But if you must....split that drive in half.
450GB for the OS and applications, 450GB for all that other stuff.
Or maybe 300/700.

Only you know how much your application suite takes up.