Making room in the hard drive

[willchr2004]

I have a laptop with 100GB of memory over 1 physical hard drive. In my computer it tells me I have 2 hard drives (C + D) which is rather annoying because it seems that one of these has become full and is causing my laptop to slow. Is there anyway i can dedicate more space from my D drive to my C drive so I can effectively defragment my laptop and increase run speeds?

Thanks,
Chris

[bonibonin]

well mr chris you should delete unwanted files made by u and then look to the properties of c drive and d drive and find which one is full and cut and paste to other drive which one is empty or just move the wanted things to any removable drive or write it to dvd CD

[ACtheTROLL]

just clear the space using cd/dvd or a usb hard drive

windows likes empty discs ... NTFS should really have 20% free
windows will create a swapfile between 1 and 2x your physical ram ... more if it needs to

temp files are created for every task .... and download or copy a file and windows creates a temp file ... then copies to the real file (which is done using a temp file) so downloading a 1Mb file requires 3Mb

I could go on .... and on .... and on ... and on

[rojash]

I had a similar problem with my bedside table. It had two drawers and one of them was full up while the other still had plenty of room. So I called a carpenter and asked him to make the full drawer bigger , and the other smaller. He came up with the most amazing solution: Take some stuff out the the full drawer and put it in the half empty one. Ain't technology marvellous?

[VHG]

You have one PHYSICAL hard drive, but it has been divided into two PARTITIONS called C and D.

Normally Windows and all your programs and personal files are stored on C.

Often D is used maybe as a recovery partition containing a "backup" version of Windows, so if you need to you can make a "new" copy of Windows using the image on the D drive.

If D is NOT a recovery partition then you could easily move some of your personal files from the C drive to the D drive.

What you need to do is:

1) Find out how big your C drive and D drive are. You can usually right click on the icon in Windows and it will tell you.

2) Find out how much SPACE you have on C and D. Again a right click should tell you.

3) Find out if your D drive IS a recovery partition or if it can be used as a general partition but is maybe currently empty.

4) It may be time to either consider backing up some files on your hard disk to CD or DVD to free up some space, or maybe buy an external harddrive and copy some files to there.

[willchr2004]

...u called up your carpenter? thats quite embarrasing I wont lie, i mean surely thats a no brainer.

anyway...

Most of my space is filled with windows crap i dont use of know what it is. It wont let me move the stuff across and gives me an error message every time i do. I heard you can simply increase the partician memory for one of the disks under some kind of bois process?...Guess im wrong. I have an external hard drive but i have removed all the stuff i dont need (about 10GBs) and what is left is windows stuff and its driving me crazy...
To help out rojas, does anyone have any ways of describing this in a less complicated manner, perhaps dealing metaphorically with drawers (or a way he will understand)?

Much appreciated

[ACtheTROLL]

ok so we have a table with 2 drawers ... and cardboard box

what I don't understand is what's the window's stuff
windows is 6Gb at most

so 100-6 = erm ... not very much

therefore the rest is cr@p
if it's progs ... they can be uninstalled
if its data it can be backedup/transferred ....

all my machines have more than one partition ... it's tidier ... and makes rebuilding less destructive

it also means you have to consider what goes where ... admittedly it's not a no brainer .... quite the opposite in fact ... but I'm embarrased for you

[VHG]

>Most of my space is filled with windows crap

MOST ?

I agree with ACtheTROLL, Windows and all its "crap" should only take up about 10Gb at most.

I have a 40Gb "C:" drive on my dekstop with Windows XP, Office and a few others programs and it uses less than 10Gb.

If you have a large partition of C: and it is nearly full, then it must be full of your personal files because it certainly is not full of Windows "crap".

[VHG]

>It wont let me move the stuff across and gives me
>an error message every time i do.

Moving Windows files, or your programs files, is NOT as simple as just moving the files from one disk to another.

When Windows, or a program, is installed it updates all sorts of "system" files with its location and directory name.

You cant just move the files from say C to D without causing all sorts of problems.

What you CAN move from C to D (or to an external drive) is your PERSONAL files.

These might include MP3 files, video files, digital photographs and so on.

Everything else (Windows and program files) has to stay on C.

[VHG]

>I heard you can simply increase the partician memory
>for one of the disks under some kind of bois process?...

No, nothing in the BIOS can change partition sizes.

There are programs available which can change partition sizes, Partition Magic for example.

But to be honest, that is not your problem.

Your problem is that you seem to put EVERTHING on the C drive and nothing on the D drive.

You may have a huge D drive sitting there with nothing on it waiting for files.

If that is the case, then just move some of you personal files from C to D.

[VHG]

btw you have not answered ANY of my questoins from my append from 11:56 today.

If you want us to help we need more information.

1) How big are C and D?

2) How much room is on C and D?

3) Is D a recovery partition (look at your PC documentation)?

[VHG]

As I said, RIGHT click on the icons for your C drive and D drive, then from the menu select Properites.

In XP thIs window will be displayed

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/0-blog-pics/winxp -disk-properties.png

This tells you how big each disk is, and how much USED space their is and how much FREE space.

Tell us what YOURS are.

[pudniw]

"u called up your carpenter? thats quite embarrasing I wont lie, i mean surely thats a no brainer. "

I think what he was trying to say was "Instead of trying to increase the size of your C drive, move some of your stuff from the C drive to the D drive - it's a no brainer"

[willchr2004]

pudniw- I intend on sorting out my problem, not having some kind of petty game with u, besides, if u read the conversation and fully understood what I and others have been writing, maybe you would see that simply moving from one 'drawer' to the other is not an option.

Im not entirely sure what this 'crap' is, but its protected. I have a sony which I have had for 4 years, so its been updated quite a few times, and It contains loads of programs with it of which I have no idea what they are! I like to keep my drive as empty as possible, but after spending a couple of hours, the only things I have left to delete are music, and Id rather not frankly. My C drive has 36GB (and 1.2GB free) in total, my D has 48GB (with 44BG free). Everything seems to want to save into my C so my D is almost empty...
sorry took a while to reply, was away the entire day

[ChuckFickens]

Quick easy fix for you...

Step one... open my computer, double click the D drive and then click the file menu and select new > folder. and name the folder my documents

Step two... on your desktop right click on the "my documents" icon and select properties. then click on "move" in the window that pops up click the little plus next to my computer, then the one next to D.... then click once on the new folder you created called my documents to highlight it and click OK

When it asks do you want to move all your stuff to the new location click yes.

Wait...........

Now check how much space you have on your drives.