harddrive partitions

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Guest

Hi, I have an 80 gig harddrive and it's partitioned into two drives C and D.
The C drive is allocated 20 gigs and the D drive has the rest. My system is a
sony vaios and it was configured this way when I purchased it. My problem is
this, the C drive is nearly full and I've moved as many programs as I could
to the D drive. But the C drive is still full, Is there a way to change the
partition size or remove it with out losing an information? Disc cleanup
only helps so far and i've defarged with no real resultes. Can you help?
 
I am having the same issue. Back when I was a software tester at MS, there
was a way to increase the size of a disk partition. Is there a way to do this
in WinXP (if there is, I haven't found it!), or do I need to buy some
third-party software to do it?

If I have to buy third-party software....does anyone know if V-Comm's
Partition Commander is any good?

Thanks.

mahubbard
 
rosaria said:
Hi, I have an 80 gig harddrive and it's partitioned into two drives C and D.
The C drive is allocated 20 gigs and the D drive has the rest. My system is a
sony vaios and it was configured this way when I purchased it. My problem is
this, the C drive is nearly full and I've moved as many programs as I could
to the D drive. But the C drive is still full, Is there a way to change the
partition size or remove it with out losing an information? Disc cleanup
only helps so far and i've defarged with no real resultes. Can you help?
Click to expand...

You will need a 3rd party partition manager like Partition Magic to resize the
partitions nondestructively.

In the mean time:

Uninstall some applications and re-install them on the D: drive.

Ensure Internet Explorer only uses about 5-10 MB for Temporary Internet
Files.

Clear out all temporary files in all your Temp directories. There may be
one under Windows, and others in Documents & Settings under each user name in
the Local Settings folder.

If you use Outlook Express, move the Message Store to a folder on the D:
drive.

Move the pagefile to the D: drive.
 
John -- I have the same problem on the same system...so I'm piggybacking to
Rosairo's question.

I've done all the things you've mentioned, except moving the pagefile. How
do I do that?

In addition, for every program that gives me the option, I've been
installing it on drive D. Oh, for the good old days, when MS let you install
IE and just about anything you wanted (except the OS) on D instead of C! Now
they don't give you the option.

Do you know if when I install Partition Magic, it will need any space on C?
I have gobs of free space on D but almost none on C.

Also...wondering if anyone knows if V-Comm's Partition Commander is any
good. It costs less than Partition Magic & right now money is a big concern.

Thanks.

Mahubbard
 
Hi, I have an 80 gig harddrive and it's partitioned into two drives C and D.
The C drive is allocated 20 gigs and the D drive has the rest. My system is a
sony vaios and it was configured this way when I purchased it. My problem is
this, the C drive is nearly full and I've moved as many programs as I could
to the D drive. But the C drive is still full, Is there a way to change the
partition size or remove it with out losing an information? Disc cleanup
only helps so far and i've defarged with no real resultes. Can you help?
Click to expand...

Windows XP doesn't have a built-in way to do what you want. Resizing
partitions without losing information requires installing a partition
manager program, like BootIt Next Generation or Partition Magic.

You might be able to free up enough space on C to solve the problem
without resizing partitions. Try these steps:

1. Sony installs a lot of unnecessary programs on its computers.
Un-install the ones that you don't need.

2. Move large data files (pictures, music, etc) from C to D.

3. Disable hibernation in Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance
Power Options > Hibernate.
Click to expand...

4. Delete files that Disk Cleanup doesn't find. You can safely delete
the contents of these folders:

C:\Temp
C:\Windows\Temp
C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Temp

You might have to enable viewing of hidden files to see the last
folder.
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
addressed directly to me in E-mail or news groups.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
 
mahubbard said:
I've done all the things you've mentioned, except moving the pagefile. How
do I do that?
Click to expand...

Control Panel | System | Advanced | Performance Advanced | Virtual Memory |
Change

Highlight C:, select "No paging file", Set.

Highlight D:, select "Custom size", Fill in 768 or 1024 (for 512 MB - 1 GB RAM)
in both Initial and Maximum size blocks, Set.

Reboot.

It's not ideal, but you probably won't notice the difference.

Do you know if when I install Partition Magic, it will need any space on C?
I have gobs of free space on D but almost none on C.
Click to expand...

It probably installs some DLLs on C:, but most of it will go on D:.

Also...wondering if anyone knows if V-Comm's Partition Commander is any
good. It costs less than Partition Magic & right now money is a big concern.
Click to expand...

No idea. I've used Partition Magic for years.
 
Thanks, this helped a bit -- my daughter had a lot of temp files in her user
files, and a couple of photoshop psd's she'd forgotten to save onto D.
Deleting the temps & moving the psd's got me into a safe amount of free space
& WinXP is working better now.

I'm downloading copies of manuals from various partitioning programs to
compare them. Looks like I might need to uninstall GoBack before I can use a
partitioning program to do the ultimate "fix" of making C drive bigger. I
don't know why Sony make C such a small part of a humongous drive in the
first place!

Thanks for your help.

mahubbard
 
Thanks, comments interspersed:

John R Weiss said:
Control Panel | System | Advanced | Performance Advanced | Virtual Memory |
Change

Highlight C:, select "No paging file", Set.

Highlight D:, select "Custom size", Fill in 768 or 1024 (for 512 MB - 1 GB RAM)
in both Initial and Maximum size blocks, Set.
Click to expand...

Whoo hoo. Apparently I'd already done most of this at some point in time in
ancient history (I've forgotten when), but I hadn't set C to "no paging file"
-- it was set so the system would figure out what to do by itself. I changed
it to "no paging file".

D was ok.
Reboot.

It's not ideal, but you probably won't notice the difference.



It probably installs some DLLs on C:, but most of it will go on D:.



No idea. I've used Partition Magic for years.
Click to expand...
I'm downloading some user manuals for the two programs people have mentioned
here (Partition Magic and BootIt NG), as well as the one I'd found called
Partition Commander, and I'll compare them before buying. It looks like I
might need to uninstall GoBack in order to use partitioning software. I
wonder if Partition Magic might be ok with it, though, since they are both
from the same company?

You guys have been very helpful, thank you!

mahubbard
 
Thanks, AJR...But I think Rosaria and I have both run disk cleanup about a
gazillion times (as well as defrag and everything else we can think of). As
space has gotten tighter on C drive, we dump temporary IE files routinely,
and run disk cleanup. Typically, disk cleanup only frees another 250k or so,
because I've already done just about everything it does.

The main problem is that Sony ships their computers with a teensy, tiny C
drive partition, and by the time the windows software has done a bunch of
updates over the course of around 2-3 years, it's full...even if everything
else is installed on D drive instead of C.

mahubbard
 
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