Safe To Use Partion On Laptop

chateauneufdupape

Hi, I have a Toshiba laptop with a 300GB hard drive. It came with a 150 GB "C" Drive and a 150GB "E" Drive which I presume is a partition rather than a second drive. The only thing on the "E" Drive an HDD recovery folder, about 5GB worth, so there is about 145GB free.

Is it safe to use some of this space for storing other files, particularly photos. Alternatively, can this drive size be reduced and the "C" Drive size increased?

As a matter of interest, why do they partion the drive and why make it 50% of the capacity?

fwor

I don't know why they would choose such a large partition, but if you're sure that there really is free space and it's not full of hidden files, yes it should be fine to use it. You should be able to see an accurate picture of usage from within Disk Management.

You can also re-size ~some~ partitions, depending on which version of Windows you have. IIRC, if they are both Primary partitions then you should have no problems. If the second partition is a logical one, you would probably have to delete it before you could re-size the C drive, which obviously you should not do.

chateauneufdupape

I have checked "show hidden files" and when i right click on the drive the pie chart shows 145GB free. We have 2 other Toshiba laptops and they all have the same set up where 50% of the capacity is given over to the "E"Drive.

fwor

Take a look at it in Disk Management. You should be able to infer from that whether both are Primary, or whether the second one is a Logical Drive within an Extended Partition.

If you have an older version of Windows then Disk Management may not include the ability to re-size partitions (IIRC that came in with Vista, but I'm not certain).

There are third-party tools - such as GPARTED, which is free - which will let you re-size, again with some limitations.

Take a full backup before making any changes though!

Linbox

You could shrink the windows partition and grow the E drive with something like http://www.partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=start
Say 100G for windows & 200G for the other

chateauneufdupape

I have checked Disk Management and they are both primary partitions. Moving the photos over will free up about 25GB on the "C" Drive which will leave plenty of room, so I don't think it is worth trying to resisze the partitions and risk mucking things up. Thanks for your help.

TakeThis

Of course you can use the partition without concern.

Though you should make your Recovery discs.