Bob Pringle said:
I have two hard drives on my computer, C and D.
C is nearly full, and starting to get really slow. Can I safely move items
from one hard drive to the other, especially photographs which take up a ton
of space.
Can programs be safely moved as well or do they have to remain in C/Program
files
Since you didn't provide any details on the size of either hard drive, it's hard
to give specific advice. One thing I will say is that if your C drive is smaller
than 20GB, you might consider replacing it with a larger drive. Most new hard
drives come with an installation CD that will copy the contents of your old
drive to the new one.
It's usually safe to move any data files to another hard drive. You may need to
point the programs that open these files to the new storage location. Relocating
installed programs would mean having to uninstall them from C and reinstall them
on D. For some programs, this is not an option. Personally, I leave all my
programs on the C drive and my data on the D drive.
Here are some other suggestions on how you can open up some space on your C
drive.
1. Relocate the My Documents folder to the D drive. Take a look at this article
for more info.
How to Change the Default Location of the My Documents Folder
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310147
2. Reduce the amount of hard drive space allocated to System Restore.
Go to Control Panel and double click the System icon.
Click on the System Restore tab.
Under Available drives, click on the C drive so it's highlighted.
Hit the Settings button.
Move the slider to the left so it reserves no more than a GB of HD space. That
should leave you two weeks worth of restore points.
3. Reduce the amount of space allocated for Internet Explorer's
cache.
Go to Control Panel and double click Internet Options.
Hit the Settings button in the Browsing history section on the General page.
Note: Hit the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section of the
General page if using IE6.
Reduce the amount of disk space used to something between 50 and 100 MB.
4. Reduce the amount of space used by the Recycle bin.
Right click the Recycle bin icon on the Desktop and select Properties from the
menu.
Move the slider to the left. 5% should be more than enough.
5. Remove Windows Update uninstall files.
The files used to uninstall updates to Windows can be deleted
if you're confident that they will not have to be uninstalled
in the future. These files can be found in the Windows folder
with names similar to this $NtUninstallKB123456$. They are
hidden folders so make sure you enable viewing of hidden files
and folders in Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View tab.
Note: Do not delete the $hf_mig$ folder. This folder will be
used by future updates.
Here's a web site which provides an automated way of deleting
these folders.
Courtesy of Doug Knox, MS-MVP
Removes Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs
Registry entries.
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm
6. Relocate the storage location for files used to store email. How this is done
depends on the program used.
Finally, before you take any steps to relocate your files, make sure you have
them backed up. And test the backups to see if they can be easily restored
should something happen to the originals.
Good luck
Nepatsfan
