New laptop with two partitions?

[BananaInc]

Hey everyone! I had just received my ASUS laptop that came in the mail today. Everything looks good as expected except for some confusion I wish to avoid. When I started reinstalling the base programs (Skype, Steam, etc.), I noticed that one of the installations was showing my C: drive only having 371 GB which was odd considering I ordered a laptop with a 1 TB hard drive. Once this install finished and a few program installs later, I check to see that I instead have a C: and D: drive with 558 GB on it. With some of my programs already on the C: drive and knowing that inevitably I'll get full and run into more problems down the road so I stopped downloading anything for now.

tl;dr question: How do I go about getting all of my program files from my C: drive to my D: drive? I've never owned a computer with two paritions before and would like to avoid any problems of having a full drive. The OS is on C: and it shows roughly 180 MB of data on the D: drive. I'm running stock Windows 10 if that matters at all

[Potato Man]

Newer was a fan of partions but the way I understand the idea is to seperate instaled programms from data so you could reinstal more easy. 370gb is an ok size for instalations IMO. Just keep instaling on c, but keep pictures, dokuments and stuff like that on d.

[[☥] - CJ -]

i'm not sure how they partitioned it
But D tends to be the recovery partition

it was like that on an ASUS netbook i had as well, the partition sizes bein all weird.

What i would do, if its being a pain is
if you have Win10 installed, which you probably do, you can install Win10 on a USB Flash Drive and do a clean install of Win10, deleting the partitions and only having the main one, which will give you all your space back and be localized on a Single Partition.

The downside to this, aside from doing a format, is all the software that came preinstalled, ASUS software etc will be gone.

But that shouldnt really be a problem as you'll get rid of any crappy stuff and have a Full CLEAN version of Win10 and any software that you may want you should be able to get from ASUS Support site for your laptop.

The only thing youd have to do is have your network drivers handy incase Win10 doesnt have a default network driver installed. so you can goto the ASUS site for a Win10 network driver or the NIC's website.

For a Win10 reinstall, you can use the program SPECCY to snag your Win10 key, that way you can input the serial when asked. as your Win10 is already verified with Microsoft you shouldnt have to do that.. BUT its a good idea to have your Windows key handy just incase something may happen as not all Vendors supply a windows key some where on their laptops nowa days..

To answer your Q though
as the C drive is the main partition, thats the default directory programs will be installed to
If you want to direct something to be installed on the D drive(which i wouldnt recommend if thats where the Recovery files are), all youd have to do is create the same program folders that are on the C drive onto the D drive

such as Program Files
and Program Files (x86)

or you can have the program create a folder itself when you have the install location set to D with its own custom folder

For example, i have an SSD and a HDD
SSD for the OS and certain games
HDD for others

i have Origins Titan Fall install directed to the D drive, which would be
D:\Origin Games\Titan Fall

And some Steam games on the D drive which would be
D:\SteamLibrary

So if you were to install a program on your D it would look like
D:\Program Files (x86)\Programname

all you do is put D in place of C, and when the program installs it'll automatically create the needed folders.

But keep in mind, some programs dont like being installed on drives other than C

pretty much it really

[Bad 💀 Motha]

D drive usually would say "Recovery" on it in "My Computer" or "This PC"

That should actually be hidden from users; as an Admin would know hot to access it/use it.
Users should not add data to this partition; leave it alone. It is there specifically for when you need OEM Factory Restore/Recovery options with that particular system.

Since your system is new, first you want to go to StartMenu > look for the OEM name as an available folder in there > then bring up the Make a Backup options and then you can make a set of Discs (using blank DVDs) or USB Flash Drive and then make a hard copy of your OEM Factory Recovery; after you've done this, then I would clean wipe the entire drive as one partition and clean install your OS + Drivers; so there is no bloatware or wasted space.

[Seven7]

Actually you might have a 3-4 partitions:
1 50-250Mb hidden bootable Windows partition recovery without the letter
2 the system partition with Windows (C: \)
3 partition for the creation of backup copies of the system (D: \) which may consist the drivers folder
4 hidden partition HPA(Host Protected Area) about 2-15Gb that contains the installation recovery image , and which must remain even after formatting, since deleted by special program such as Victoria, MHDD, HDAT, etc. with NHPA command

if you change partitions without creating a complete copy of the recovery to the factory condition, then it will not be able to do it later: built-in laptop recovery system has a special boot sector and partition labels, as well as non-standard spaces between sections, and will simply cease to function.
in the case of any problems, you can not reset the laptop to the factory and sold out