Computer help

Looking for a "how to" on how to change the partition on my hard drive. So I have a hard drive on my desktop, that was partitioned at the factory into a C drive and a D drive. The "C" drive part of it is nearly full, and causing my computer to run like crap, plenty of room on the D drive, so I would like to either change the partition or even eliminate it all together. Anyone able to help out there?
Sony Viao computer, running Windows XP

 

There is a bunch of software out there that can modify partitions. If there's nothing on the D: partition, why don't you just take the data (ie, the music & pics that are probably filling up your drive) and move them to the D: partition, and start using that for storage.

 

Couple of options here.

1. Move data from your C drive to your D drive. I am guessing your MY DOCUMENTS folder has probably filled up, with music, pics and whatever. Easiest way to get your My Documents redirected to the D drive is to RIGHT CLICK on your My Documents folder, and click PROPERTIES. The target path will probably ready something like

C:\Documents and Settings\username\

Click on MOVE and just point it at the D drive. Dont worry about setting up the same file structure. Just dump it there right on the root of D. It will ask you if you want to move the content also, and you DO want to do this. Might take 2 minutes or 30, depending on how much stuff you have in there.

Theoretically your system will perform better with data being located elsewhere than your boot partition, however you probably wont notice a difference.

OR.............


2. Download and pay for Acronis disk director. For $50 it lets you repartition on the fly. I have used it a bunch of times, and it is easy to use. It will let you move unused storage from D and assign it to C. Only takes a few minutes and requires 1 reboot.

If you need anymore help email me at powderrecon@gmail.com

Ash.

 

With Windows XP you are limited on your options other than moving files over to another drive/partition. Vista and Windows 7 give you a little bit more flexibility.

As you have a Sony VAIO, you should probably disregard anything anyone says about repartitioning the hard drive. Sony ships their PC's with all of the restoration software on a seperate partition, hence your D: drive. Wipe this out and you have nothing to restore with if your PC crashes. The D: drive is going to be set at a specific size for a specific reason meaning that all those restoration files that they use have to be extracted/expanded somewhere and the D: drive is where that is going to happen... which is why you see that it probably has a lot of free space right now.

Simply put, your easiest option is going to be to buy an external hard drive (or internal if you want to) and move your files over to it. If you want to change partitions around, Acronis is a good option and so is Partition Magic. Thats your call but I would advise against it unless you know how to reinstall Windows manually, download drivers, and have all the software that you will need on disk or somewhere other than your primary Windows partition.

And I'm not trying to knock anyone for suggesting to move files over to the D: drive or resize it. I've done it to my own personal stuff from time to time and there is nothing wrong. The only reason I advise against it is that partition is where all of the factory restoration files exist. Changing, using, or deleting that partition creates issues down the road should something go wrong with the PC and if Spike doesn't know what to do in that case he could be really screwed.

 

Meatloaf makes a good point here. Don't mess with your recovery partition if you want to restore back to factory one day.

In that case buying an external hard drive is a good option. I mean, for $80 these days at Costco I think you can get like 320GB. Insane.

 

nipple boy

PM cundalini.....aka neck nipples....he is at work and will help you......lives for shit like this.:thumbsup:

 

actually you can find 1TB drives for $100-$130 all day long and catch them on sale in the $75 range.

and fwiw, i've been through this situation hundreds of time. i used to work as a pc repair tech at a local shop for several years. your simplest, easiest way out of this is more storage space. external storage is easier but internal is sometimes perferred and they are faster.

 

Yeah, I thought that too. My 1TB NAS is down to less than 100GB free and the 640GB in my main rig is down to less than 80GB free, the Media Center has a 160GB almost filled, and the laptop has about 10GB free of the 120GB. Programs and media files are growing rapidly in size. I couldn't even begin to imagine much space I would be using if all my music was in FLAC instead of MP3 and my videos weren't in DIVX/XVID.

 

yeah 1 TB and a half is about 189 or so at costco. 250 is like 69 dollars.

 

I haven't put anything on the C drive in years, if I could avoid it. And long ago removed documents and pictures, but when I get software updates, hardware updates, windows updates, antivirus software updates, etc, it all goes on C. Even some software doesn't give you the option of where to put it when you install it. So it has slowly been filing up.

 

thanks, might try that, if I can't find a free option out there. Seems silly to require a program to do it, it is all on one physical disc, should just me a menu setting somewhere. Oh, wait, it is Windows...

 

The way it shipped was the C is 13.9 and the D is 92.8, doesn't that seem backwards? I bought a new internal drive, installed oh about a year ago, computer will not boot up off it for some reason, as soon as I put it in the primary position, the computer will not boot up, even though the copy was supposedly made OK. Folks at Seagate, at least the ones I spoke to, couldn't help me.

 

If your D: partition is 92.8GB in size, you are free to do whatever you want with it. There is absolutely NO reason to have that big of a partition for a restoration partition. I would definately repartition stuff so that you have say a 40GB partition or so for Windows and leave the rest to the D: partition.

 

partition magic is your friend - split, merge, join partitions


here is a shareware workalike
Acronis Partition Expert - Shareware and Freeware Downloads.

 

Yeah that is what I was thinking, the only question is how to do it? Foolishly until I bought the other hard drive and went to install it, I had actually thought the thing had two hard drives, a C and a D drive. I had only bought the other hard drive to replace the "C" drive, I opened up the box and was like "what the hell??!!?!?!"

 

cool thanks

 

You can delete the D partition and then extend C into the unallocated space you obtained by removing D.

However, you can't do this within windows (on XP). Hiren's BootCD 9.8 has a tool called MiniXP (stripped down PE environment).

You'd launch the command prompt and use Diskpart (included with windows) to delete the D Partition and then extend C. You can't do this within windows on XP has the volume will be locked (Vista can extend partions that are in use, XP can't).

Alternatively, you can always buy a larger hard disk and clone your current one over. Use a tool like CloneZilla or PING (Part Image is not Ghost) to clone your data, then extend partion to the end of disk.

Others that have suggested that you should just migrate data to another source are correct. It's the easiest way and ultimately the most convenient, especially if your computer dies or you need to accesst he same data on multiple machine (and presumably either can't/won't/don't know how to network them). Also, as mentioned you keep your recovery partition intact.

However, if you D drive is really 92.8 GB in size, it is not a recovery partion. The largest I've ever seen is about 10GB.

EDIT: If you let me VNC (remote desktop software that will allow me to navigate your machine from mine) into your machine I can put together a 'best route' plan of action for you. I do this every day at work (I build/repair/assemble/test/specify computers for a living)