Acer Aspire T180 80GB hard drive

[kaw69]

Hi When I look in my computer it shows Hard drives (2) Acer (C:) 10.7 GB free of 34.0 GB and DATA (D:) 33.5GB free of 33.6 GB Question Will it start to fill up (D:) when (C:) is full or is there a way to use (C:) for programs to run and use (D:) for data and let my pc run a lot faster also since when did 34 + 33.6 add up to 80 GB
Thanks

[Ethel]

I suggest you move all your personal files - documents, music, video, photos etc to D.

It is easy to do (assuming XP). For example, open 'My Documents'

Click 'edit' - select all

Now click 'move selected items' in the left hand panel, and click on the D drive.

[rojash]

No it won't use D when C is full. It's up to you to you D as and when you see fit. One way would be to move your Documents and settings to the D drive, as follows:
Open Windows Explorer (Start/Programs/Accessories/Windows Explorer)
Right-click My Documents and choose Properties
Click the Move button
Click the plus sign next to My Computer
Click on the D drive to highlight it
Click Make new Folder and give is a suitable name
Click OK

All the files in your My documents folder and its sub-folders will be moved to the D drive, and all weel behaved programs will in future default to saving their files there.

[rojash]

The reason that your sums don't add up is that you are adding the free space and expecting it to come to the total space - you need to add in the used space as well!

[wildwood]

Your computer won't run any faster just because it has less data on the HDD, but you need to keep about 5GB free to enable the expansion of the modern programs when they are running. It is the applications that are running that slows it down, not the amount stored.
You can easily delete the D partition through 'Disk Management' which will make your whole HDD one drive and you'll also get some of the missing storage back.
Formatting a disk always takes a fair chunk of the space.

There are programs such as Partition Logic around that will let you combine different partitions and indeed different physical HDDs as one but with the present drive sizes this is not necesarry any more and may not work in Vista. This was popular when a 6GB HDD was considered a big one.

[vehelpfulguy]

>is there a way to use (C:) for programs to run and use (D:) for data and let my pc run a lot faster

Moving personal files to your D drive will NOT make you PC run any faster.

Files sitting on your hard disk have almost no effect on how fast you computer runs (they can have an effect if your hard disk is full up, but that is not the case on your PC).

[kaw69]

Thanks rojash I thought there must be a way to not only move the files but future files will be saved there as well kaw69

[wildwood]

Don't mention it, you're quite welcome.