Dell XPS C and D SSD Drive - How to Set Up?

1 TB is more than enough for a new pc drive.  I would just keep using the C drive which is a 1 TB partition of physical 2 TB drive.  if later on your data begin to fill up the C drive then you can gradually back up the important data (copy paste) in the empty D: Drive (a 2nd logical drive on the same physical ssd). 

this set up essentially enables you to have a 1 TB back up D drive which has the same capacity of primary drive C.  not every user need to have this set up but Dell has it this way to meet everyone's needs.

it does not matter whether C and D logical drives are on the same physical ssd.

at this point worrying the OS might fail losing document is too early.

enjoy it now

How to change where files and apps are saved by default on Windows 11 

@jc9

Are you sure you have 2 different drives or it more than likely is a 2TB drive partitioned into a few drive 'letters'.

I have 2 PHYSICAL 'disks', an SSD of 512GB's, and a hard drive of 1TB. This is what I see when I run DISK MANAGER (open a CMD prompt and enter 'DISKMGMT.MSC' to run it:

On my DISK 1, the 1TB hard drive I created 2 partitions. If you run DISKMGMT, I don't think you can see on the DISK 0 which should be the SSD 2 1TB 'drives' (called partitions with assigned drive letters). The boot 'drive/disk' has about 50GB's of other system partitions and Dell Recovery one.

Assuming though you have 2 drives, this would be normal, everything to the C: UNLESS you when installing programs or assigning 'data' locations in a program, will default to C:. It takes action by you when installing programs to select via BROWSE usually, to router the install to the other drive.

I use C: for the OS and programs I want/need with it. See, I used Acronis to back up my PC. On the C: I only put/allow programs and the OS that I want to keep together. Everything else, goes to my other drives. I do have a D: but that is the CD drive. Some of my 'odd' drive designations, K:  and L: are due to the migration from an older XPS that had drive letters assigned (hard assignment) of the removable media slots and the CD, so I stuck with that lettering.

For instance, my e-mail client (Thunderbird), browser (FireFox), office suite, Acronis, etc. I want to be there if I should HAVE a complete disk failure and need to physically replace the drive and have it working fine. Everything else basically to the other drive letters. NOTE, that on C:, especially in the USERS folder a lot of data is put there pointing to the specific drives. If I did suffer a loss of C: or even got it infected so bad I couldn't recover, I can just restore a back up. It also allowed to purchase the PC with a smaller boot drive.

Is there a 'benefit' of one single large drive? I don't think there is a set answer. If both drives (partitions) are on the same physical SSD, probably not. SSD's are not like physical hard drives that require head movement to do operations. Splitting a hard drive would mean a lot of movement of some distance when it accessed D: to start a program, C: to load some DLL's or data kept on the C:, and then back to D: for the program data.

The only drawback from a single drive with 2 partitions vs. 2 individual drives is you might only lose one drive and all that was one it. With a single physical SSD, you'd lose 2 drives if it were to go bad.

It might even be wise to but a physical hard drive, and then install it, delete your present D: since nothing is in it and EXPAND the C: drive to use the old D: space. Then on the added physical hard drive format it, assign a drive letter (does not have to be D:, use any you want) and start using that for programs and data.

Now, for 'large' data, you might still want to keep that on an SSD (yes, you can get SSD's as the 2nd drive as well) as it will load faster.

Here is some reading for you, https://www.lifewire.com/use-two-hard-drives-in-one-computer-5222733, hope this helps.

@ispalten​ Thanks for the great info.  Yes I believe it is 2 drives. The specs on the PC say "2TB (2 x 1 TB) m.2 PCle Solid State Drive".  Initially I didn't notice that.