You're not still running Windows 95 there, are you?

no, Win 7 ultimate with 6TB of spinning discs 🙂 I've never noticed any overhead from the defrag and the machine usually sits at <1% busy…

Oof, storage envy.

mtb_rossi > well said.

Not sure about the Desktop restriction though; it's fine on mine, my desktop looks like an explosion in an icon factory. I don't remember ever changing the security on it, though it's a couple of years old now and used to be Vista, so who knows.

Having a D parition on the same hard disk as the C parition is pretty pointless if you are seeking to secure your files from annihilation.

In most circumstances I'd agree; where it can be useful though is in those rare situatons where the OS is irrecoverably screwed (I've had this once with a particularly horrible malware infection) or the owner wants for format the disk for other reasons.

This was a bigger deal historically, where Windows might have had a lifespan of twelve months before it was so monumentally buggered that 'format it and start again' was deemed acceptable preventative maintenance, but there are situations where it can be useful.

You're right though, in terms of "safeguarding your data" it's largely pointless. I blew away the OEM partitioning on my laptop in favour of one big one for exactly that reason.

From a personal point of view, all my user folders are on an external disk using a gigabit ethernet connection. All thats on my hard disk is the OS and software installations.

Desktop restriction happens by default on Windows 7 even if you're an admin. It will allow short cuts thought I think. I instantly turn it off though. I've seen some out of the box installations of XP where the manufacturer has decided to restrict desktop access via group policy. It messed up all sorts of things.

But I do think MS have got Windows 7 right.

Right. I either turned it off and forgot, then, or it's a throwback to its past life as a Vista machine.

And yes, I'm liking 7 a lot.