Using my D drive

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

I must admit first up that I am not a computer wizz. I am basically stupid when it comes to these machines.

What I would like to know though is whether I should store all my astro related data on my D drive.

Currently everything goes to my Documents in C drive by default and the D drive is almost empty.

It would make sense to me to use the D drive for something and therefore free up some of the C drive.

The reason I ask is that Nebulosity has been freezing lately when downloading data. I was told this may have something to do with buffering and the C drive being almost full.

I back up my data to an external drive from time to time to clear the C drive.

Does any of this make sense? What else can I do?

Thanks

Frank

[RB (Andrew)]

Hi Frank,

Yes it's always a good idea to store your personal files on a separate drive.
Not only does this free up your C drive so your OS will work smoother but also it's good practice in case you need to re-install only your OS at some point.

I like keeping the C drive only for my OS and installed programs and have my D drive for data.
Also I have a third drive as a scratch disk when working with programs like Photoshop etc.
I keep backups of my C and D drives so in an emergency I can just swap HDDs.

If your C drive is fairly full, you should free up some space so that your OS can run smoother.

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Andrew,

Thanks for the advice and it was as I thought.

Frank

[rogerg (Roger)]

wonder if it's worth clarifying what your D drive is? For example pre-configured PC's like Dell's, HP's, etc often have a D drive which is only there to store what's effectively the installation files of your PC. In this scenario there's not much space there for you to use and you'd be better off sticking with C drive.

The question is if you D drive is an extra disk you have in/beside your computer with lots of space, or it if is a small drive for storing installation files/images.

Roger.

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Roger,

When I go to my computer it says the D drive has 138 of 139GB free.

Frank

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

I have to backup what RB has said do what he has said and you can't go wrong.

[Barrykgerdes]

Originally Posted by telecasterguru

Roger,

When I go to my computer it says the D drive has 138 of 139GB free.

Frank

That is a massive amount of space unless you store videos'

I would recomend that you divide it into two drives (D and E) or even more.
Configure your word processor to store files on drive D (and transfer all the documents you have already stored there as well, along with all the files that have your own generated information, like pictures etc

In the E drive I would store an image of C drive.
There are free programs on the internet that will allow you to do this

Barry

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by RB

Yes it's always a good idea to store your personal files on a separate drive.Not only does this free up your C drive so your OS will work smoother but also it's good practice in case you need to re-install only your OS at some point.

Very sound advice.

[Visionoz (Bill)]

With branded laptops/PCs they normally have a partitioned drive D (though on some, this is only a small space/area to store the "recovery image" of the system) and you can easily use "My Documents" to store your documents directly to D drive automatically without having to physically selecting D drive every time you save your data

Right mouse click on the "My Documents" icon on the desktop and then select "Properties" then look at the "Target Folder Location" - this tells you where the default location of the data you save into "My Documents" is - all you have to do to change this to sit somewhere on D drive is click on the middle button "Move" and when the "Select A Destination Folder" windows pops up; browse to the D drive by clicking on the + sign next to My Computer in the directory tree to show you D drive and make sure you create a new folder in D drive to say something like "Users" and create a new "My Documents" in there and then click on OK - after this just click on the "Apply" button (bottom right hand corner) and accept Yes to the prompt that asks whether you want to move all your current files over to the new location - that is all and hereafter whenever you save/store anything into the My Documents folder it will be actually saved to the new location of "D:\Users\My Documents\" in D drive

HTH
Cheers
Bill