Hard Drive Questions

Kingsd316

Hi all

Just after some advise really, here is the story, ive got a PC that has a 160gb HDD, but this is split between 2 drives C: and both 80gb each, my C: drive is virtually full and my is pretty much empty, is it possible to merge them into 1 as i keep getting low warnings popping up even though D is empty, or are they likely to be 2 separate 80gb HDD's?


I know i can move things like my documents, picture etc but that wont really free up much space as its mainly programmes that are taking the space up.

If its not possible to merge them cause they are separate is there a programme that can completely mirror my C: drive onto a new bigger HDD so i can just swap them over?

Thanks

mj12_2

It is possible to merge them, depending on your version of windows you may need to download software to do it though.

Look in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and depending on if they are primarly or logical partitions you might be able to merge them in there

Otherwise get yourself a copy of Partition Magic which will do it for you.

Back up everything before you do though as if anything goes wrong you will likely have to reformat and install from scratch

closed

all of those are possible, but im surprised you have 80GB of programs, are you sure?

Kingsd316

Thanks, its Windows vista im using, im not at home at the mo so cant give you the drive details, sounds scary though if something goes wrong, whats the best way to back up everything, ive got a WD 500gb usb drive which i could back it up to

Toxteth_OGrady

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

mj12_2

If its Vista then you should be able to merge them in Windows if they are logical partitions; the best way to backup is probably to use Windows Backup to do a complete system recovery backup.

Its not liekly anythign will go wrong - i've messed around with the partitions on my laptop loads and never had a problem its more a precaution than an expectation of a problem :-)

Kingsd316

mj12 wrote: »

Its not liekly anythign will go wrong - i've messed around with the partitions on my laptop loads and never had a problem its more a precaution than an expectation of a problem :-)

Make sure you are on hand at about 19:00 tonight when my new thread comes up saying

"lost everything messing about with things i don't understand"

lol

mj12_2

Kingsd316 wrote: »

Make sure you are on hand at about 19:00 tonight when my new thread comes up saying

"lost everything messing about with things i don't understand"

lol

Lol it'll be fine :-). Do take the backup though as if you don't Murphy's Law insists that something will go wrong :-)

Kingsd316

closed wrote: »

all of those are possible, but im surprised you have 80GB of programs, are you sure?

Not sure on this but my my documents folder (which has photos music videos etc) is only 4.8gb so presumed the rest was programmes as i dont really use any other folders on the laptop cause i use my external hdd

closed

If programs and vista take up more than 30gb i'd be surprised

use windirstat and ccleaner to find out/cleanup

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=45197656&postcount=8

external hd's are best used for backups, not data you may not want to lose

Spank

If you've never deleted old restore points that will free up a lot of space