Hard Disc Partitions

[Challenged]

I have a DELL and I have re-loaded XP Professional, the C (NTFS),D and E
(NTFS)drives set themselves up. When I turn the machine on, it boots from 'C'
drive which has the XP Operating system and is sized at 2 gig. 'D' drive is
the DVD and 'E' drive which has 35.25 gig sits there and does nothing. A 2
gig 'C' drive is too small to add all the necessary software; how do I
combine or switch C and E or how can I turn E into C...how do I rename and
change the file paths to use E as the boot disc partition? I am aware that C
and E are partitions on the Hard Drive: without reformating or reloading xp,
how can I get more work space?

 

[Mike Torello]

I have a DELL and I have re-loaded XP Professional, the C (NTFS),D and E
(NTFS)drives set themselves up. When I turn the machine on, it boots from 'C'
drive which has the XP Operating system and is sized at 2 gig. 'D' drive is
the DVD and 'E' drive which has 35.25 gig sits there and does nothing. A 2
gig 'C' drive is too small to add all the necessary software; how do I
combine or switch C and E or how can I turn E into C...how do I rename and
change the file paths to use E as the boot disc partition? I am aware that C
and E are partitions on the Hard Drive: without reformating or reloading xp,
how can I get more work space?

Get a third-party partition manager

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

It's free.

Delete "E"

Resize "C" to take up all the space from that deletion.

 

[Daave]

I have a DELL and I have re-loaded XP Professional, the C (NTFS),D and
E
(NTFS)drives set themselves up. When I turn the machine on, it boots
from 'C'
drive which has the XP Operating system and is sized at 2 gig. 'D'
drive is
the DVD and 'E' drive which has 35.25 gig sits there and does nothing.
A 2
gig 'C' drive is too small to add all the necessary software; how do I
combine or switch C and E or how can I turn E into C...how do I rename
and
change the file paths to use E as the boot disc partition? I am aware
that C
and E are partitions on the Hard Drive: without reformating or
reloading xp,
how can I get more work space?

In order to resize partitions, you will need a third-party application
to do this.

The information you provided so far is incomplete and incorrect. For
instance, if C: contains XP Pro, it's impossible for it to be 2GB! To
get all the information you need (size of the hard drive, size of the
partitions and amount of free space), do the following:

Start | Run

type "diskmgmt.msc" (without the quotation marks)

OK

Feel free to post back with the information from the Disk Management
utility.

Also, how do you want to manage your partitions? Do you want to keep the
number at two and just resize them, using C: for XP Pro plus programs
and E: for your data? Or perhaps do you want just one large C:
partition? For more info, see:

http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

 

[Big_Al]

Challenged said this on 4/5/2009 12:16 AM:

I have a DELL and I have re-loaded XP Professional, the C (NTFS),D and E
(NTFS)drives set themselves up. When I turn the machine on, it boots from 'C'
drive which has the XP Operating system and is sized at 2 gig. 'D' drive is
the DVD and 'E' drive which has 35.25 gig sits there and does nothing. A 2
gig 'C' drive is too small to add all the necessary software; how do I
combine or switch C and E or how can I turn E into C...how do I rename and
change the file paths to use E as the boot disc partition? I am aware that C
and E are partitions on the Hard Drive: without reformating or reloading xp,
how can I get more work space?

Here's an idea:
An imaging program like Acronis True Image Home or Norton Ghost will
make an image of your C: drive on an external media. If you only have
a 2 GIG C: drive, then you can make the image on your E: drive and then
copy to a DVD for external storage. IMO I'd get a usb external backup
drive, but that's another story for later.

Once moved off to D:, I would verify the image just to be sure.
Then make a restore CD from the installation of Acronis, and when you
boot off the restore CD, restore the DVD image, you will have the option
to restore it to C: but use the entire C: drive. This will effectively
kill the E: drive. I believe you can do this with the 15 day trial
they offer. You will lose none of your setup / config but gain space
if done right.

This is assuming the C: and E: are one hard drive and not two separate
items. You'll see that in disk management.