I see about 30 unique OEM laptops and desktops a week in my work, and while this isn't always the case, it often is: the boot drive sliced up into stupid, absurd sizes that make no sense at all. Fujitsu seem to be the worst; their w8.0 A series had something like a 100GB C: partition and a 400GB D: partition labelled 'DRIVERS' Meanwhile, Acer and Asus laptops often have the drive partitioned into two equal parts, the second labelled 'Data' (but with no folder redirection in place, meaning the second partition goes totally unused in the hands of a typical user). But then, today - this is easily the worst I've seen. I mean...really?
I have never understood why companies do this or rather don't do this in regards to folder redirection. As you say I have come across and seen questions from people saying C drive is full but have a totally empty D drive or whatever letter it is. Extraordinary poor customer service in my opinion.
The 'rents Toshiba is actually pretty sensibly partitioned... the standard EFI and Windows Reserved Partition, a partition for Tosh's recovery image and the remaining 400-ish GB left as one partition for the windows install and documents...
My first guess would be that they are using a standard image for all their machines, it's probably setup to make the system partition 40Gb, extend the next partition up to a 10Gb limit, and leave anything after that as unpartitioned space.
You're alive, hurray! If it makes any difference, you've just named what I consider to be two of the worst laptop manufacturers of today. Acer seem to have lost a lot of the quality which used to be present in their products over the past 5 years, and don't even get me started on ASUS laptops. They do everything else very well, but their consumer laptops just seem to suck! I agree though, the partitioning rubbish is complete madness. Common sense is clearly not used when system images are being built for these machines.
I'm glad I don't have to deal with this kind of crap. No stupid partitions when we deploy systems at work.
Acer where always the most rickety sacks of crap in my book. Always seemed to be super slow whatever spec they were too due to all the bloat on stock images.
What do you mean by "folder redirection"? Can't people select where to put their data? I put mine on the D: drive (or games on E. Heck I've got a partition of it's own for the swapfile (but that's a winXP relict)
I use a smallish SSD so move all the MY folders to the bigger HDD so anything added to these does not clutter/fill my SSD.
Folder redirection is like having a fake folder that actually stores the files in another location, so while a folder called "My Games" may exist in a persons user profile the data is stored in another location.
Altiris Cheesecake :thuimb: I don't have to deal with this sort of nonsense in the enterprise arena, but I still see it plenty with my private consumer clients.
Yes but you need some random sized partitions of enterprise devices to store the random 3Gb PST files and crap they accumilate. or save in stupid places (Windows temp folders my favourite) Folder re direction is a god send OK there will be a user profile held in another location but saves having all the data on a portable which can get damaged. Plus if they do bork it somehow you can either just roll it back or reset the local data.
To translate humans preference to segment information into the computing world ? Don't we find it easier to process information when we compartmentalise it ?
If done properly your data on one partition, windows installed on another if it all goes a bit wonky you don't lose your data, just the inconvenience of reinstalling windows and programs. They must be sending the good stuff away from the uk then
Clarity Man to the rescue! The greatest shortcoming of us techies is often our inability to imagine how normal people use computers - or, worse still, to complacently forget that normal people are meant to be able to use computers. But this is precisely what OEMs exist to do: provide PCs that normal people can pick up and use. Normal users will use the Desktop, My Documents and My Pictures folders and pretty much nothing else. This is almost universally true. If, like me, you're making custom locations elsewhere on your drive and creating shortcuts to them, you, like me, are in the 1%. In fact, if you organise and modify folder structures at all, or even know how to use them, you're in the 1%. (And yeah, in a perfect world everyone would have this basic understanding of computers before using them, but OEMs can't afford to educate or ignore the 99% of customers who don't.) Since w7 it's been very easy to relocate these folders transparently. It can be done with registry modifications (so it happens to every account created thereafter) or through the GUI in the properties panes of those folders for one user. In situations like this, where they're left on the C: partition and the C: partition is small, the user is bound to fill up that partition. In fact, it happens all the time: I have to repartition machines like this every week because somebody plugged an iDevice in and iTunes did a couple of full backups of it, or they transferred their photos from their camera, or ripped some CDs, and now their C: partition is full and the computer is unusable despite being almost brand new. I've tried to think of an excuse and/or explanation for this practice within OEMs and all I can come up with is that the same human beings aren't involved in more than any one stage of the process. One team designs the images, another team tests them, a third selects the hardware, a fourth assembles it, a fifth images them off. And when guy #5 discovers that the previous four teams' efforts have resulted in a 40GB C: partition and 239GB of unallocated space, he doesn't know exactly whose fault it is and he doesn't get paid enough to care or mention it to his superiors. The funny thing is, I've never seen a laptop review mention this sort of thing in between all their wafflings about the style of the bezel and the feel of the keyboard.
