How to partition my 1TB hard drive on windows 8

[andyyang24]

Hi,
I recently bought an ASUS laptop and it was preloaded with windows 8 64-bit. But I don't know which specific version is it.

I am a newbie to windows 8, so can someone tell me how to allocate 1TB hard drive to make it efficient. I will be using laptop for gaming and watching movies and using Microsoft Office.

More importantly, how much space should I leave for my C drive? At the moment I checked nearly 42GB storage has been used for windows 8. I guess not only it includes windows 8 but other programs, like McAfree and Adobe.

I want to partition my hard drive soon cause I want to see how good my laptop goes with PES 2013.

Thanks

 

[Bubbaleone]

You're a bit unclear in your description. What type/capacity drive is Windows 8 currently installed on? Is the 1TB drive a drive you acquired, for the purpose of installing a different operating system and games on, that you want to know how to efficiently partition?


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[andyyang24]

You're a bit unclear in your description. What type/capacity drive is Windows 8 currently installed on? Is the 1TB drive a drive you acquired, for the purpose of installing a different operating system and games on, that you want to know how to efficiently partition?


.

It's my bad. I don't want o install a different system. BTW, is windows 8 working well with games?

The laptop is preloaded with windows 8 and it only has two disks.
C drive has around 390GB and D drive has about 550GB. I didn't remember the exact figure though, but the storage has 909GB in total.
I want to shrink my C disk volume because 390GB is too much for C drive.

So, how many disks should I create? And how many space should I leave for C drive?

 

[Bubbaleone]

If you plan on creating junctions for your Program Files and User Data to volume D:\ , then you should be OK with shrinking volume C:\ to 128GB. A word of caution: Factory computers, that come with preinstalled operating systems, all contain one (and sometimes two) hidden partition that contain an image of the original system configuration for restoration puposes, and the Windows 8 installer creates two hidden partitions as well. If you're unfamiliar with how to manipulate partitions on a volume, you could easily hose your new system.

 

[postmortemIA]

adding more partitions won't improve anything. it will make things worse. The disk is faster at start of the partition, and is slower as you go forward. Read/write operations are faster if disk head does not have to move too much. So partitioning it excessively will degrade performance. It would make sense to only separate user documents (pictures, movies, music, game save files, etc.) on a separate volume.

 

[andyyang24]

If you plan on creating junctions for your Program Files and User Data to volume D:\ , then you should be OK with shrinking volume C:\ to 128GB. A word of caution: Factory computers, that come with preinstalled operating systems, all contain one (and sometimes two) hidden partition that contain an image of the original system configuration for restoration puposes, and the Windows 8 installer creates two hidden partitions as well. If you're unfamiliar with how to manipulate partitions on a volume, you could easily hose your new system.

To me, Microsoft is making things more and more complicated to us.
Why does windows 8 need 2 partitions....

So, based on your advice, I'll shrink my C drive to 128GB first. What do u think of the rest of the storage, that is about 780GB? How many drives should I partition?
Thanks.

 

[andyyang24]

adding more partitions won't improve anything. it will make things worse. The disk is faster at start of the partition, and is slower as you go forward. Read/write operations are faster if disk head does not have to move too much. So partitioning it excessively will degrade performance. It would make sense to only separate user documents (pictures, movies, music, game save files, etc.) on a separate volume.

Thanks for your advice. That was easy to understand.

How many disks should I create on windows 8? If possible, can u tell me how much space should I allocate to C drive?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Carefully re-read what postmortemIA had to say. Personally, I'd leave the configuration the way ASUS has it set up. As fast as todays processors, memory, and HDD SATA interfaces are there isn't any advantage to having multiple partitions like there was in the days of IDE interfaces, Pentium IIIs, and 256MB of 333MHz memory.

 

[andyyang24]

I'd like to have 3-4 disks. What do you think?
Now I only have two disks in my laptop, I'd like to have one or two disks. So that my folders would not become too messy.

 

[Bubbaleone]

If you want to create more partitions you can certainly do that. You need to first sit down and make a best guess estimate of what you realistically plan on installing or continually accessing, and what you'll be storing but not accessing very often, in GBs, and then base your partitioning plan on that.

I strongly advise against trying major partitioning work like this from within the Windows environment. Use a good, bootable, disk/partiton editor with a GUI that will let you see the hidden partitions, as well as review your changes before you commit them.