Partitions Revisited

[Guest]

My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: partitions. When I purchased it
(Sony Vaio desktop) The start-up and all the preinstalled programs were and
still are on the "C:" partition with less than 15 GBs of memory. I have
access to the "D:" partition and have a lot of stuff backed up but have used
less that 20 GBs of the memory. The "C:" partition is about maxed out. Can
someone tell me how to reverse the paritions or move some of the memory from
the "D:" partition to the "C:" partition?
Robert

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Robert

Where and when did you first vit the subject of partititions as none
would wish to go over old ground? I cannot locate a recent previous
post on this subject!

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700
mb. Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this
time find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and
exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and
exit.

Another default setting which could be wasteful is that for temporary
internet files especially if you do not store offline copies on disk.
The default allocation is 3% of drive. Depending on your attitude to
offline copies you could reduce this to 1% or 2%. In Internet Explorer
select Tools, Internet Options, General, Temporary Internet Files,
Settings to make the change. At the same time look at the number of
days history is held.

The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive. Change to
5%, which should be sufficient. In Windows Explorer place the cursor
on your Recycle Bin, right click and select Properties, Global and
move the slider from 10% to 5%. However, try to avoid letting it get
too full as if it is full and you delete a file by mistake it will
bypass the Recycle Bin and be gone for ever.

You can also increase free disk space on your C partition can be
achieved by relocation of folders.

For Temporary Internet Files select Start, Control Panel, Internet
Options, Temporary Internet Files. Settings, Move Folder.

To move the Outlook Express Store Folder select in Outlook Express
Tools, Options, Maintenance, Store Folder, Change.
http://www.tomsterdam.com/insideoe/files/store.htm

My Documents is one of a number of system created Special Folders
including My Pictures and My Music. These can more easily be relocated
using Tweak Ui. Download TweakUI, one of the MS powertoys, from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

In TweakUi select My Computer, Special Folders. You can scroll down to
see the full list of Special Folders to the left of the Change
Location button.

You may also need to change Default File locations in the Microsoft
Office programmes you choose to move the My Documents folder. For Word
go to Tools, Options, File Locations, highlight Documents, click on
Modify and change file path. For Excel go to Tools, Options, General
and change default file path.



--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[SmoothNinjaGirl]

i recommend using Norton Partition Magic.. it is a very useful
program. will help you do all you need with partitoning including
resizing partions.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: partitions. When I
purchased it (Sony Vaio desktop) The start-up and all the
preinstalled programs were and still are on the "C:" partition with
less than 15 GBs of memory. I have access to the "D:" partition
and have a lot of stuff backed up but have used less that 20 GBs of
the memory. The "C:" partition is about maxed out. Can someone
tell me how to reverse the paritions or move some of the memory
from the "D:" partition to the "C:" partition?

Third party tools or uninstall/reinstall apllications on whatever driver you
need to..
(Partition Magic, BootItNG, etc..)

Also - archiving would probably be a good idea with some other general
cleanup...

Used Disk Cleanup?
Is hibernate turned on and do you use that feature?
Uninstalled unnecessary applications lately?

You can run Disk Cleanup - built into Windows XP - to erase all but your
latest restore point and cleanup even more "loose files"..

How to use Disk Cleanup
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

You can turn off hibernation if it is on and you don't use it..

When you hibernate your computer, Windows saves the contents of the system's
memory to the hiberfil.sys file. As a result, the size of the hiberfil.sys
file will always equal the amount of physical memory in your system. If you
don't use the hibernate feature and want to recapture the space that Windows
uses for the hiberfil.sys file, perform the following steps:

- Start the Control Panel Power Options applet (go to Start, Settings,
Control Panel, and click Power Options).
- Select the Hibernate tab, clear the "Enable hibernation" check box, then
click OK; although you might think otherwise, selecting Never under the
"System hibernates" option on the Power Schemes tab doesn't delete the
hiberfil.sys file.
- Windows will remove the "System hibernates" option from the Power Schemes
tab and delete the hiberfil.sys file.

You can control how much space your System Restore can use...
(You may want to turn this off on your system.. 3GB?!)

1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Highlight one of your drives (or C: if you only have one) and click on
the "Settings" button.
4. Change the percentage of disk space you wish to allow.. I suggest 5% or
higher.
5. Click OK.. Then Click OK again.

You can control how much space your Temporary Internet Files can utilize...

Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to a
size between 128MB and 512MB..

- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 128MB and 512MB. (Betting it is MUCH larger right
now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10
minutes or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.

You can use an application that scans your system for log files and
temporary files and use that to get rid of those:

Ccleaner (Free!)
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Other ways to free up space..

SequoiaView
http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

DX Hog Hunt
http://www.dvxp.com/en/Downloads.aspx

JDiskReport
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html

Those can help you visually discover where all the space is being used.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: partitions. When I purchased
it
(Sony Vaio desktop) The start-up and all the preinstalled programs were
and
still are on the "C:" partition with less than 15 GBs of memory. I have
access to the "D:" partition and have a lot of stuff backed up but have
used
less that 20 GBs of the memory. The "C:" partition is about maxed out.
Can
someone tell me how to reverse the paritions or move some of the memory
from
the "D:" partition to the "C:" partition?
Robert

You can't "reverse the partitions". And Windows comes with one tool to
revise partition sizes, but it involves deleting the partitions first, and
you probably don't want to go there since that wipes your data, too.
There are 3rd party partition editing programs, but be sure you have backed
up the system first... and that often means another hard disk.

If your system has a smaller hard disk, simply get a larger hard disk and
use something like the Acronis TrueImage trial to clone the existing disk
and expand the C: partition size. Use this new drive as the system disk.
For reference, I've recently purchased 250 gig drives for around CDN$82.
This will simply end the problem.

Run the cloning process in manual mode (you'll see this) - it's the only way
you get the "proportional" option to clone the existing C drive to all the
space on the new drive.

You can simply move data to the D: drive from C using copy and paste, and
when it's done, delete it from C. Don't delete it until you're sure it's
safe. You can also use FileSync from fileware.com

For installed programs, these would have to be uninstalled then
reinstalled.

HTH
-pk

 

[Gordon]

My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: partitions. When I purchased
it
(Sony Vaio desktop) The start-up and all the preinstalled programs were
and
still are on the "C:" partition with less than 15 GBs of memory. I have
access to the "D:" partition and have a lot of stuff backed up but have
used
less that 20 GBs of the memory. The "C:" partition is about maxed out.
Can
someone tell me how to reverse the paritions or move some of the memory
from
the "D:" partition to the "C:" partition?
Robert

Firstly Disk space is NOT "memory". Memory is what you run programs in and
disappears when you turn the computer off.

As to your C drive "maxing out" - I run my WHOLE SYSTEM on a 15GB
partition.....(with a 20 GB partition for data) and I STILL have 7GB free on
the C drive - maybe you need to review what you have on there....
Move your My Documents folder from C to D. (Right-Click on My Documents,
choose Properties, go to the Traget tab and click on Move)

HTH

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: partitions. When I
purchased it (Sony Vaio desktop) The start-up and all the
preinstalled programs were and still are on the "C:" partition with
less than 15 GBs of memory. I have access to the "D:" partition and
have a lot of stuff backed up but have used less that 20 GBs of the
memory. The "C:" partition is about maxed out. Can someone tell me
how to reverse the paritions or move some of the memory from the "D:"
partition to the "C:" partition?

First, a word on the terminology: it's disk space you are talking about, not
memory. The word "memory" is used for RAM (the stuff you probably have 256
or 512MB of) not disk space.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "reverse the paritions," but there's no
way to do anything like that.

What you apparently want to do is make the C: partition larger and the D:
partition smaller. Unfortunately, no version of Windows before Vista
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.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very Gerry. You answered all my questions. I was surprised to to
hear from someone across the pond. My heritage is Welsh and we had a most
delightful visit to the land of my fathers two years ago but also visited the
midlands before returning home via Heathrow. Nice of you to help me. Thanks
again.
Robert Pritchard (son of Richard)