Windows 7 Simple Hard Drive Question

[mhawk12]

I have Windows 7 Home Premium, which has a C drive and a D drive. Two hard drives.

I just want to know WHY there are two drives. Why was the choice made to have the two drives as opposed to one?


I appreciate any feedback.

 

[Joe S]

Where are you looking in Computer or in Disk Management? Is it actually 2 physical drives or is it one drive partitioned? If it is actually 2 physical drives there a number of reasons. Automatic backup, extra storage, run two OSs one on each drive.
Joe

 

[mhawk12]

I open 'Windows Explorer' then open 'Computer'. It's two physical drives, C and D. I say it's two drives because I doubt a basic laptop from best buy would come with the hard drive partitioned. Link Removed


I've attached a screenshot that I saved with Microsoft Paint

 

[Joe S]

What is the size of the third partition Q ? It may be a system restore image or if it's small like 200mb it may be boot files if its 10-15Gig it's a system restore image. Can you get a shot in Disk Management? Get the portion with the bars.
Joe

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Looking at the size of the drives I would guess that this is one 500 Gig hard drive partitioned into two drives.
And that the 3rd partition is the recovery partition.

The reason for doing this is generally so that if you have a failure of Windows or a virus of some sort that requires re-installing the operating system completely you can do so without losing all you files.

With the hard drive partitioned you can format drive C:\ and leave everything on Drive D:\ untouched.

I always did this in the old days when I had only one hard drive.

Now I always have multiple drives and I don't have anything except software and basic Widows stuff on my C:\ drive.
I have that all backed up to another drive so it's not worth partitioning anymore.

Mike

 

[mhawk12]

Well that's what's strange. Because when I click on that Q: drive it gives me an access denied message. Attached another screenshot

Link Removed

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

That's because Q is the recovery partition and is only accessible through the recovery process.
This may vary by manufacturer but is probably done by pressing the F11 key during the boot process.

Check your manual for info.

Mike