partition questions

[Guest]

I have a sony VAIO laptop with a partitioned hard drive. The C: partition is
7.44 Gig/FAT 32 and the D: partition is 11.17 gig FAT 32. It was given to us
by someone whose business was folding, and is running as slow as Christmas.
I don't understand why whoever set it up made the smaller partition the one
that windows runs from- there is only 646 MB left (not even enough to defrag
properly!).

Anyway, is there any way I can (without losing data) change the drive
letters or switch it so that it runs from the larger of the 2 partitions?

Also, is there any way to combine all the user accounts into one (I think I
will post this on a separate thread as well) to free up some space?

Thanks for any help you can give-
Cheryl

 

[Tom Porterfield]

I have a sony VAIO laptop with a partitioned hard drive. The C: partition is
7.44 Gig/FAT 32 and the D: partition is 11.17 gig FAT 32. It was given to us
by someone whose business was folding, and is running as slow as Christmas.
I don't understand why whoever set it up made the smaller partition the one
that windows runs from- there is only 646 MB left (not even enough to defrag
properly!).

Anyway, is there any way I can (without losing data) change the drive
letters or switch it so that it runs from the larger of the 2 partitions?

No. You would need to reinstall Windows on the larger partition, losing
all settings and requiring that all programs be reinstalled under the
new Windows installation in order for this to work.

An option you do have is to resize partitions. If there is a large
amount of free space on D, you can decrease the size of D, move it to
the end of the drive, and then increase the size of C. Tools within XP
cannot do that without risking data loss. However tools such as Bootit
NG from http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html can do this without losing
your data. As this is a major operation, make sure you have a good
backup before proceeding.

Also, is there any way to combine all the user accounts into one (I think I
will post this on a separate thread as well) to free up some space?

You cannot combine accounts, but you can copy the data files from one
account to another. So copy the data out of the accounts that you want
to eliminate (if the data is in the individual My Documents folders for
each account) and then remove the accounts.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Windows
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.

 

[DL]

The C partition is plenty large enough for win.
The problem is that software installations default to C unless you do a
Custom Installation
If you have the origonal software cd's you should uninstall those that are
on C and reinstall to D.

You can in any case, move the My Documents Folder to D, you can also delete
the IE temp files

The reason Sony supplies it configured this way is so users can keep data
etc on D, then they can reformat/reinstall C without losing data.
Unfortunately many users dont realise and just blindly install everything to
C

Defragging is not something you should worry about at this stage.

 

[Gene K]

You probably would be better off to completely re-install the OS AFTER you
backup all you want to save to an exterior source. As another poster has
mentioned, STOP letting everything install to C if you choose to use more
than one partition.

 

[Gordon]

I have a sony VAIO laptop with a partitioned hard drive. The C: partition
is
7.44 Gig/FAT 32 and the D: partition is 11.17 gig FAT 32. It was given to
us by someone whose business was folding, and is running as slow as
Christmas.

That's nothing to do with the partition sizes. 7.44 GB is more than adequate
to run the OS. What you need to do is to a) delete all temp and Temp
Internet files and b) move your "My Documents" and Email files to the D:
drive.