I have 2 hard drives, and one is ONLY 5% unused, the other is 95%

[Guest]

I have a Sony Viao Laptop computer and there are 2 hard drives. The primary
hard drive is only 5% unused and the other is 95% unused. This laptop is
running very slow and I feel that there is no room for programs to run from
the primary drive. How do I fix the problem. My customer has not backed up
her harddrive in some time...is there a possibility of fixing the issue
without backing up?

Could the drive with only 5% free, be causing IE to run slow, and other
programs as well? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Guest]

A rule I follow is to never use more than 85 percent of the space available
on a harddisk... for safety. Once you hit the 90 percent mark, things will
begin to run much slower, more errors will suface, and overall system
performance will suffer. If at all possible, move a big chunk of the data to
your second harddisk. You want to keep the harddisk holding the os in
tip-top shape..... having only 5 percent available is definitly a bad idea.

 

[Guest]

If possible, it would be a good idea to uninstall some of
the applications from the C drive and reinstall them on the
D drive. There are probably a lot of applications
installed that are never used that can be uninstalled.
Clean out your temp files and temporary internet files and
you could see a big change.
On my own laptop, I move my I386 file to the D drive. It
might not be a good idea to do that on a client's machine.

 

[David H. Lipman]

I severely doubt that you have two hard drives. I'll bet the notebook owner was screwed by
Sony and they partitioned the ONE notebook hard disk (notebooks rarely have more than one
hard disk) into two partitions.

I suggest two possibilities...

1. Use Ghost and create an image of the hard disk as is and then wipe the hard disk on
the notebook and reinstall the OS, Service Pack 2 and all post SOP2 HotFixes and any
software on just one partition, the "C:" drive. Then extract the data files from the Ghost
image to their respective destination locations on the notebook.

2. Use partition magic to correct the allocation.

BTW: If this is a "customer" how come YOU have to ask the above and why don't you know how
to post using a News Client ?
It kind of implies you don't have the ability to serve this "customer".in the first place.

--
Dave




| I have a Sony Viao Laptop computer and there are 2 hard drives. The primary
| hard drive is only 5% unused and the other is 95% unused. This laptop is
| running very slow and I feel that there is no room for programs to run from
| the primary drive. How do I fix the problem. My customer has not backed up
| her harddrive in some time...is there a possibility of fixing the issue
| without backing up?
|
| Could the drive with only 5% free, be causing IE to run slow, and other
| programs as well? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Assuming that the laptop belongs to a customer, and that you are the
maintenance man, how come you have not checked for obvious things like
numerous files saved in the default documents folder, or checked for masses
of temporary internet files?

 

[Ron Martell]

I have a Sony Viao Laptop computer and there are 2 hard drives. The primary
hard drive is only 5% unused and the other is 95% unused. This laptop is
running very slow and I feel that there is no room for programs to run from
the primary drive. How do I fix the problem. My customer has not backed up
her harddrive in some time...is there a possibility of fixing the issue
without backing up?

Could the drive with only 5% free, be causing IE to run slow, and other
programs as well? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I suspect that the second "hard drive" is in fact a "System Recovery"
partition used to restore the original Windows installation if the C:
drive ever has to be reformatted.

It would be extremely unusual to find 2 physical hard drives in a
laptop. I have never seen an instance of this.

Slow running would not normally be caused by a nearly full hard drive.
More likely causes include viruses, spyware, and miscellaneous
background tools and toys that have been installed on the computer.

Good luck




Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Ron

From what I have been told by owners of Sony Vaio computers, the drives are
partitioned into 16gb primary partition and whatever is left as a second..
seems a little large for use solely as a recovery partition.. next time I
find myself in Future Shop, I will take a look, even though it will break my
promise never to engage one of their employees in any kind of conversation
re. computers..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[David H. Lipman]

Some notebook vendors, such as Sony and IBM, sell their notebooks with a small "C:"
partition and a large "D:" partition. In those instances and for other reasons, when I get
a new line of notebooks, the OS is installed from scratch as one large "C:" drive. All of
the client's office suite is loaded and configured, the installation profile is copied to
the "Default Profile" and then the platform is Syspreped and Ghosted to an image.

--
Dave




|
| >I have a Sony Viao Laptop computer and there are 2 hard drives. The primary
| >hard drive is only 5% unused and the other is 95% unused. This laptop is
| >running very slow and I feel that there is no room for programs to run from
| >the primary drive. How do I fix the problem. My customer has not backed up
| >her harddrive in some time...is there a possibility of fixing the issue
| >without backing up?
| >
| >Could the drive with only 5% free, be causing IE to run slow, and other
| >programs as well? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
|
| I suspect that the second "hard drive" is in fact a "System Recovery"
| partition used to restore the original Windows installation if the C:
| drive ever has to be reformatted.
|
| It would be extremely unusual to find 2 physical hard drives in a
| laptop. I have never seen an instance of this.
|
| Slow running would not normally be caused by a nearly full hard drive.
| More likely causes include viruses, spyware, and miscellaneous
| background tools and toys that have been installed on the computer.
|
| Good luck
|
|
|
|
| Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
| --
| Microsoft MVP
| On-Line Help Computer Service
| http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
|
| "The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a Sony Viao Laptop computer and there are 2 hard drives. The primary
hard drive is only 5% unused and the other is 95% unused. This laptop is
running very slow and I feel that there is no room for programs to run from
the primary drive. How do I fix the problem. My customer has not backed up
her harddrive in some time...is there a possibility of fixing the issue
without backing up?

Could the drive with only 5% free, be causing IE to run slow, and other
programs as well?

That will not affect speed until disk space runs out altogether. But I
would resolve that by moving My Documents onto the second drive. Open a
My Computer window on the second drive and another on
C:\Documents and Settings\the user\
to show My Documents, then *right* drag it across, taking *Move* here on
releasing the button

Running very slow suggests infestation with parasites. See
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm for advice

 

[Alex Nichol]

I suspect that the second "hard drive" is in fact a "System Recovery"
partition used to restore the original Windows installation if the C:
drive ever has to be reformatted.

It would be extremely unusual to find 2 physical hard drives in a
laptop. I have never seen an instance of this.

It will be a separate partition; but Sony machines I have met have come
with the disk partitioned in two. And unless they have changed they
provide an approximately proper CD that allows elements of repair
reinstall without affecting the second partition

 

[Chris Barnes]

I have a Sony Viao Laptop computer and there are 2 hard drives. The
primary hard drive is only 5% unused and the other is 95% unused.
This laptop is running very slow and I feel that there is no room for
programs to run from the primary drive. How do I fix the problem. My
customer has not backed up her harddrive in some time...is there a
possibility of fixing the issue without backing up?

I assume the one that is 95% full is the system drive (the one with the
Windows install on it).

1) Move My Documents to the D: drive

2) Make sure they don't have files saved on the Desktop. Save them to
the D: drive and put a shortcut on the desktop. Or... Move the Desktop
folder itself to the D: drive (reg hack).

3) Clear the Temporary Internet Files, then move that to the D: drive

4) Create a Temp directory on D:. Change the environment variable for
both Temp and Tmp for both User and System settings to that directory.
Be sure to Clear out C:\Temp (if it exists) and C:\Windows\Temp.



--

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Chris Barnes AOL IM: CNBarnes
(e-mail address removed) Yahoo IM: chrisnbarnes
Computer Systems Manager MSN IM: (e-mail address removed)
Department of Physics ph: 979-845-7801
Texas A&M University fax: 979-845-2590