I've been in that position exactly once in my life.

That taught me to back up my important work to another drive, preferably on another system. The advent of NAS / USB external drives has made that a breeze.

cheers

>...but if you had to wipe the OS and start again then your data would be on the d drive and you could replace the OS and format c with no problems, its not always possible to take a backup just before wiping the machine. this is why i partition, my data is too large to realistically backup every day, even weekly is a prob.
>~M
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>>Assuming that C: would be on the outer area and D: inward to the centre...
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>>I stopped partitioning my HDs as soon as it was feasible, but that's beside the point.
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>>I understand that many (most?) people like to partition their HD so that C: has all the OS and products and D: has all their working (personal) data.
>>In such a case they are paying a penalty every time they access their working data because chances are good that the OS or the active programs refer to C: frequently, for anything from their executable components to their temp files in Documents and settings...
>>This means crossing the whole of C: including a bunch of empty space every time that happens. And in the reverse direction too.
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>>I think people are better off not using partitioning, most particularly for the HD housing C:.
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>>cheers