Moving Programmes

poorly_scammo

Hello,

I've been a berk and want to know if and how I can rectify what I've done. I have a Toshiba Equium computer running on Vista with C and E drives. I have always downloaded programmes etc to the C drive simply by default as this is the first location which comes up when downloading a new programme. I've just had a look at my computer and it says that I have 13.3GB free of 55.7GB space left on my C drive and I have 44.7GB of 54.5GB free on my E drive. What I want to know is:

a) Can I move across my software from C to E without having to remove and reload it all and it is wise to do this anyway?
b) If so how? and
c) what kind of stuff can I move across and what kind of stuff should I leave where it is?

Thanks

Have to go out now but I'll be back later to answer questions.

John_Gray

It depends what you mean by "I have always downloaded programs...".
I distinguish between "downloaded software", which you download from a website, and "installed software", which you can run once it has been installed..

The simple download of the software could be to any location, in your case E: or C:.

You then install the software from wherever it has been downloaded, and the installed version will go into C:\Program Files. The downloaded software can be deleted, kept where it is or moved anywhere else you like (you probably won't need it again, except for a reinstall).

You would move the downloaded software using My Computer or Windows Explorer, by dragging it from the original disk and dropping it on the new disk, putting it wherever you like. Then once it has copied properly, you can delete the downloaded software from the original disk.

In your final question, you have to leave installed software where it has been installed in C:\Program File, but as I say above, you can delete, keep where it is, or move downloaded software.

Figment

You can also move your data (documents, photos, videos, music etc) from C: to E:. Moving the individual folders (My Documents, My Pictures) is quite easy, but moving the entire User folder in Vista is not such a straightforward task.

poorly_scammo

John_Gray wrote: »

It depends what you mean by "I have always downloaded programs...".

Downloaded rather than installed is what I meant. Thanks

-TangleFoot-

poorly_scammo wrote: »

Downloaded rather than installed is what I meant. Thanks

Which browser are you using? Chrome uses %UserProfile%\Downloads by default.

chunter

Bizarre that computer manufacturers thought it a good idea to partition a 120gb Vista drive. I've seen it quite a few over the past few years.

It shows that even the manufacturers underestimated how bad Vista was.

I'd copy all on the E drive to an external drive and merge the partitions into a single partition.

googler

It's more likely to be your data that's hogging space than your programs.

Download WinDirStat and run it on your C: drive to see what you have there. From that, you can decide what data can be moved.

-TangleFoot-

googler wrote: »

Download WinDirStat

Note: if you do this you're likely to find out where all your downloads have been going before you even get around to running it.

Figment

chunter wrote: »

Bizarre that computer manufacturers thought it a good idea to partition a 120gb Vista drive. I've seen it quite a few over the past few years.

It shows that even the manufacturers underestimated how bad Vista was.

I'd copy all on the E drive to an external drive and merge the partitions into a single partition.

The worst part being that they partitioned the drive and then did a standard install so that programs and data all went onto the C: partition. Many many users were (are) oblivious to the fact they were only using around 50% of the disk space they'd purchased.

esuhl

As Figment says, the easiest thing to do is probably to move your "My Documents" folder to the E: drive. If you right-click the "My Documents" folder, choose properties, then select the "Location" tab, you can specify a new location (e.g. "E:\My Documents").

I don't think it will actually move any files, though, so you'll need to manually move them to the new folder.

Figment

IIRC after selecting the new location it asks if you would like to move the contents to the new location (or is that just how it works in Windows 7?)

One snag to doing this is the folders in the new location will not show when clicking on the user icon on the desktop, and some file dialogues will show both the original (now empty), and new, documents, pictures etc folders.

To svoid this you can move the entire user folder, but in Vista this requires multiple registry changes.