Mystery D: drive is blank

I am not positive that this is the right place for this, so feel free to move it if needed.

OK, I have a Windows 8 Laptop (model should be in my profile), that I use as my main computer. It has a 1TB hard drive on it. When I go into my computer, the C: drive only shows about 372 GB of space total. There is another hard drive listed as D: drive. Now the way I understand this is that D: is actually just a partition on my single 1TB hard drive, and that it is used for recovery and stuff. It is currently taking over 500 GB of my available space though, and when I bought this computer I was counting on 1 TB. The odd thing is that if I open up the D: drive, there is only one file it it called "msdownld.tmp". It takes up less that one megabyte and the rest of the drive/partition is completely blank. Is there a reason for this? Can I resize the partition or delete it to recover all that wasted space? Or will I wreck my system by doing that.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Just resize it, check the size of the stuff that is in D and resize the partition so it is slightly larger than that.

So since there is almost nothing on it (one file less than a megabyte), could I just just remove the partition? I have had the computer for months and it apparently hasn't put anything on the partition yet. Can I just remove it?

I wouldn't remove it, sometimes they contain stuff. Leave 100mb of it and put the rest of it into your C Drive.

OK, I think I can spare 100 MB! Thanks for your help!

OK, maybe it isn't resolved. Here is a new twist. When I went into EasUS to repartition, i found that there is already a 900MB partition marked recovery. So what is this D: Data drive for? Can I still get rid of most or all of it? Thanks!

EDIT: Upon further research, I found that there are a few other things stored there. The recycle bin ($RECYCLE.BIN) appears to be there as well as System Volume Information, and msdownld.tmp (I assume something with Microsoft Download). How much should I leave?

So what is this D: Data drive for?

Click to expand...

It is for putting your data on, surprisingly enough.

It is not a good idea to have your os and data all mixed up like a dog's dinner on one big partition.

I do believe the idea is you can store your files there and they won't get nuked if you have to do a factory restore. Assuming you select the correct option to leave the DATA partition alone when you do the restore. I always store my Documents, pictures, music, etc on a separate DATA partition. Then when I have to reinstall Windows I only mess with the system partition and nothing gets lost. I use the Location Tab in the properties of my user folders like Documents etc, to move them to the Data partition. Once I do that everything shows up in my Libraries.

If you haven't burned a set of recovery disks or made a recovery drive I would. I've seen a few posts where resizing or removing partitions broke the recovery feature and it wouldn't run with the function key on boot up.

Ah I get it, they partitioned off a 500 GB area for storage. If you want, you can merge that into your main drive. I wouldn't though, unless you really want a huge system partition. As for that 900 MB Partition, leave that alone.

Sometimes it is good to have a stand alone partition just for storing large files.