Two hard drives?

[ATK]

I am a Sony Vaio RS220 desktop computer with XP home
edition. It has a 120G hard drive. I have been merrily
installing software on C since I've had it. I went to
install a piece of hardware that would enable me to
transfer analog video tape to digital and edit it on the
computer and decided to see how much space I had on C -
thinking it would be tons of space. I find it says C
only has 15 G of space and it is almost full. I notice I
have a D drive with 92 G of space showing. Am I supposed
to now just start installing programs on D? Should I
have been installing on D all along? I've never had a
computer that showed two hard drives before so I don't
know if installing in two different drives will make some
programs not work properly. Thank you.

 

[Papa]

Apparently your 120 GB HD was formatted into two partitions, C and D, so,
yes, you will eventually need to start saving your data and programs to the
D drive. Programs that are installed on the D drive should run just fine.
Just make sure you tell the program where to store/retrieve the data.
Alternatively, you could purchase a 3rd party program such as Partition
Magic and reorganize your HD into one large partition - that is, if your
BIOS can handle that size. Do not try using the Microsoft Format command
because all of your data will be lost.

Caution: always backup your data.

 

[Ron Burk]

In addition to what Papa said,
it's important to not let the C:
partition of your hard drive get
too full. Some badly-behaved apps
(often Microsoft apps) insist
on storing all or most of their
data on C:. If that gets too full,
you may find yourself unable to
install operating system or
browser updates when you need to
(e.g., those near-weekly critical
security updates), even though
there's plenty of space on D:.

If you are comfortable with buying
and using software to change the
partition sizes, then simply making
C: bigger at the expense of D: is
the way to go. Otherwise,
the low-tech approach is to uninstall
some of those apps and reinstall them
on D: and see how much C: space you
can free up that way.

Since you're going to be reorganizing
anyway, you might want to think about
ways of keeping your data (word documents,
mailboxes, photos, etc.) in a separate
directory tree or even a separate (i.e., third)
partition. Having your important data
logically separate from the programs you
install can make it easier and quicker
to do backups of just the "good stuff".

 

[Ian Smythe]

I am a Sony Vaio RS220 desktop computer with XP home
edition. It has a 120G hard drive. I have been merrily
installing software on C since I've had it. I went to
install a piece of hardware that would enable me to
transfer analog video tape to digital and edit it on the
computer and decided to see how much space I had on C -
thinking it would be tons of space. I find it says C
only has 15 G of space and it is almost full. I notice I
have a D drive with 92 G of space showing. Am I supposed
to now just start installing programs on D? Should I
have been installing on D all along? I've never had a
computer that showed two hard drives before so I don't
know if installing in two different drives will make some
programs not work properly. Thank you.

Havimg one large drives means it takes forever to defragment it. Keep
the setup you have. You can move programs from C: to D: with the program
Application Mover free from download.com which not only moves the
program but configures the programs to run from D:. In other words it
resets the correct path from C to D. I use it alot and it works
erronously.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Two partitions does not mean two physical hard drives are present.

In your situation, I would make the following changes. Change the XP
swapfile to the D: partition. Some of the windows swapfile will remain on
the C: partition. Any software that uses a swapfile of its own (not unusual
for video rendering), I would put this swapfile on the D: partition. Save
any rendered video to the D: partition, actually a 3rd partiion is ideal for
this. Burn resulting video to DVD and get rid of the rendered video when
done. (See DVD burning type newsgroups, too big a subject).

Be more conservative installing new software, and continue using the native
C: partition for that purpose.
Dave

 

[Michael Stevens]

Two partitions does not mean two physical hard drives are present.

In your situation, I would make the following changes. Change the XP
swapfile to the D: partition. Some of the windows swapfile will
remain on the C: partition. Any software that uses a swapfile of its
own (not unusual for video rendering), I would put this swapfile on
the D: partition.

Moving the swapfile to the D partition will free up some space, but will
also slow down the access to the swap file. Best to find other ways to free
up the space, but with 15 gigs of space still available on the C drive, I
don't see any problem in the near future if the OP starts using the 92 gig
partition for future program installs and storage.
20 odd gigs of space for XP can be managed quite easily without resorting to
unconventional or system managed configurations.
--

Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
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Save any rendered video to the D: partition,

 

[Lil' Dave]

Shortsighted by your own words. Video rendering and editing usually
requires a revamp of the system configuration to make it work correctly for
the long term. I won't go into the reasons for using application default
installation target. For some reason, you don't appear to agree with a long
term consideration. I like my box to work tomorrow, and years from now with
little change required by the user. Believe most people are of that
opinion.

If you want to get picky, a hard drive with its first partition should be
devoted for the swapfile. And, another physical hard drive should be used
for saving video to avoid swapfile bashing. I didn't throw all that out
there as this newsgroup is not for video rendering and editing, as MS
"experts" know absolutely nothing of its ins and outs for performance. Nor
is the newsgroup itself for that purpose.
Dave