Disk allocation

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Guest

This computer has a 160G HD. It is divided into two logical drives. C:
Presario - 146G with very little usage and D: Local Drive - about 6G and it
is always being filled. Windows is installed on both drives with D being
more current (last update from the properties) . Also on this drive are some
user files etc.

I am not sure how I can change this without screwing up this computer. I am
not sure if Windows wants to boot from a Local Drive or the C drive?

Any suggestions would be apprecated.
 
tencargarage said:
This computer has a 160G HD. It is divided into two logical drives. C:
Presario - 146G with very little usage and D: Local Drive - about 6G and it
is always being filled. Windows is installed on both drives with D being
more current (last update from the properties) . Also on this drive are some
user files etc.

I am not sure how I can change this without screwing up this computer. I am
not sure if Windows wants to boot from a Local Drive or the C drive?

Any suggestions would be apprecated.
Click to expand...


Windows boots from whichever partition (drive as you call it) is the
active partition. That is probably C: but no one knows what you did to
get a D: partition.

And by the way, they can't both be logical drives because no version of
Windows (or even DOS) can boot from a logical partition unless you are
not telling us *all of the story*.

In any event to *non-destructively* change partition sizes you will need
a 3rd party application like Partition Magic as XP in and of itself
doesn't include any software to do this.

John
 
tencargarage said:
This computer has a 160G HD. It is divided into two logical drives. C:
Presario - 146G with very little usage and D: Local Drive - about 6G and it
is always being filled. Windows is installed on both drives with D being
more current (last update from the properties) . Also on this drive are some
user files etc.

I am not sure how I can change this without screwing up this computer. I am
not sure if Windows wants to boot from a Local Drive or the C drive?

Any suggestions would be apprecated.
Click to expand...


There is a way you can tell which partition is handling the bootstrap
without 3rd party software.
The following is a dual boot 'boot.ini' file on a comp with two physical
hard drives:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(5)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(5)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect


Notice that each 'multi' line has quoted text. This is the blurb that
you see when choosing which operating system to boot and has no effect
on the boot process itself. Edit the quoted text in each of the boot.ini
files that are located on C: and D: to differentiate one from the other.
Reboot the computer and the actual bootstrap partition will then be obvious.

John
 
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