How do i change the size of my C: drive (NTFS) -

[Guest]

I have a 111GB hard isk in NTFS partitioned into c: 39Gb & d:72.7Gb
I also have another 111Gb hard disk NTFS.
How do i do this?


My kids keep filling up drive c: (and D: and Ewith programes, games &
music files.

I want to increase the c: drive size
Also Can someone please explain RAID (in laymans terms) and if i should use
it with the 3 hard disks

 

[DL]

You need a third party app, eg Partition Magic, in order to amend partition
sizes on the fly.
If your kids are filling up D & E what purpose will increasing C serve?
What are you wanting to achieve exactly?

If your mobo suports raid with the 2 hd's (you have 2 physical disks) you
could use mirror or stripping. With mirror you would finish up with 111gb
usable space and with stripping 222gb. There is no data redundancy in
stripping, one hd fails you lose all. The mirror raid gives an identical
data copy on both hd's, hence mirror.
In your circumstances I dont think using raid will achieve anything.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a 111GB hard isk in NTFS partitioned into c: 39Gb & d:72.7Gb
I also have another 111Gb hard disk NTFS.
How do i do this?


My kids keep filling up drive c: (and D: and Ewith programes, games
& music files.

I want to increase the c: drive size

Unfortunately, no version of Windows provides any way of changing the
existing partition structure of the drive nondestructively. The only way to
do what you want is with third-party software. Partition Magic is the
best-known such program, but there are freeware/shareware alternatives. One
such program is BootIt Next Generation. It's shareware, but comes with a
free 30-day trial, so you should be able to do what you want within that 30
days. I haven't used it myself (because I've never needed to use *any* such
program), but it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs here.

Whatever software you use, make sure you have a good backup before
beginning. Although there's no reason to expect a problem, things *can* go
wrong.

Also Can someone please explain RAID (in laymans terms) and if i
should use it with the 3 hard disks

There are several kinds of RAID, and they basically fall into two
categories: mirroring and striping.

Mirroring is what most people think of when the word "RAID" is mentioned.
Mirroring uses two or more drives, each a duplicate of the others, to
provide redundancy. It's used in situations where any downtown can't be
tolerated, because the way it works is that if one drive fails the other
takes over seamlessly. Although some people thing of RAID 1 as a backup
technique, that is *not* what it is, since it's subject to simultaneous loss
of the original and the mirror to many of the most common dangers
threatening your data--severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes,
virus attackes, theft of the computer, etc.Most companies that use RAID 1
also have a strong external backup plan in place.

Striping uses two or more drives together as a single drive to improve
performance, by having writes and read done alternately on the drives. But
if one drive in a stripe fails, you lose everything on all of them.