Steve said this on 8/21/2010 3:30 PM:
I just received an XP system that has continual problems with storage on the
C Drive.
When the drive was divided (or whatever), the small 15GB Drives named C:
The remaining large D drive (300GB or so, has the applications).
Any suggestions (other than reformatting the whole hard drive), on how I can
set the D drive up as the main drive so that this system is not always
running out of space on the C drive? Or what do you suggest?
Obviously I am looking for a quick easy solution to frustrating problem I
inherited.
Thanks,
Steve
There are easy ways to combine the data but the D drive applications
will fail to run if moved to C:. There are ini files, registry
entries etc that have locations hard coded now and then, and those
D:\... locations are going to kill you. You might be able to search
and replace them, but I think you're barking up a bad tree with this route.
However, you could use a disk imaging software or clone software (call
them what you want) like Acronis True Image Home (it does both clone and
images), and make images of both C: and D: drives obviously on another
drive like a USB drive.
Then you can restore them and Acronis lets you change the partition size
when you restore. If you are right that this is a single drive (and
disk management in control panel -> administrative tools will tell you),
then its not that hard to resize the two and make C more like 60 gig and
chop D: down to 250 gig or so. If you have space to steal from D
that is. Its a bit of work, and some unknowns are here but I myself
have done it, and you need a spare HD or place to drop the images of the
two drives for a bit.
Or a slight modification of the above, is to buy a 2nd drive to be C or
D (if this is a desktop) and put it in and restore each image you made,
but now one to each drive. This is better management as you now have
two drives with more chance that failure will not totally wipe you out.
You can backup between drives if you wanted, putting C backups on D
and visa versa.
Just my thoughts, have fun.
Al.