Partitioning hard drive?

derrick

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

It would appear you don't have any backups at all , you really should have back-ups before going any further.....

Not much since you have used CCleaner , you may have a few MB of downloads lurking , you really should do some backups

I am puzzled how you know I don't have backups from my post?

I have backed up "My Documents" and the D drive onto a 16GB SD card.

Back ups I accept should be done, but that is a separate thread and not relevant to my question on this thread, i.e. how to put more space on to my C drive without messing up the computer.

.

debitcardmayhem

derrick wrote: »

I am puzzled how you know I don't have backups from my post?

I have backed up "My Documents" and the D drive onto a 16GB SD card.

Back ups I accept should be done, but that is a separate thread and not relevant to my question on this thread, i.e. how to put more space on to my C drive without messing up the computer.

.

My fault then , I assumed

derrick wrote: »

Done the disc clean up, (I do this occasionally), but only saved me 1056KB, and made no difference to the totals ion my post #14.


Still need to know what/how to do backup, and where to save it bearing mind I appear to have about 20GB of files, progs etc.

.

Oh and this was in post 5

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Look at this http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ but ensure you have backed up first, I have never known it to cause problems but it is always better to be safe.

closed

you need to dig a little deeper below those directories to look for anything using a lot of space, sometimes one big file can be GB's. Old system restore points could be party responsible.

how much ram has it got, is there a hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys (the latter could be moved to d: in control panel, system), as could any large files in mydocs.

Toxteth_OGrady

I don't see the advantage in this particular case of retaining a 60GB logical partition (D: ) that isn't being used. Not a criticism but an observation, the OP has had the computer for a few years and hasn't figured out how to take advantage of all that spare space. My earlier suggestion was to merge the partitions but OP wants to retain two and there is the advantage that it makes an OS re-install cleaner/less risky.

Alternatively, rather than analyzing with Windirstat what can be deleted or moved from the 20 gig C: why not just resize C: to 40 gig, reducing to 40 gig. Should provide a simple, compromise solution.

Often one of the hidden culprits for taking up lots of space on a Windows OS is Installer *.msi files.

closed

repartitioning always carries a little risk, and currently the op doesn't (apparently) have an image backup in case it goes wrong, but one would probably fit on that sd card. http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Toxteth_OGrady

closed wrote: »

repartitioning always carries a little risk, and currently the op doesn't (apparently) have an image backup in case it goes wrong, but one would probably fit on that sd card. http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Yep, totally agree a proper backup strategy is needed (for a whole host of reasons). If that could be sorted I would still recommend my suggestion to resize. Having said that a resize of two adjacent primary and logical partitions with lots of free space on the logical partition being shrunk is probably minuscule risk.

debitcardmayhem

I have suggested that derrick should have a backup first, and gparted is really useful for changing the size/number of partitions , and closed has suggested moving the swap file if he doesn't wish to resize etc , it is his choice really.

derrick

derrick wrote: »

Just ran WinDirStat:-

Windows: - .....................6.7GB
Programme files: - ............4.6GB
Documents and Settings: - 2.4GB
<Files>: -....................... 1.3GB
Totals: -........................15.00GB
6 others totaling 218MB
.

With the above in mind I have copied My Documents and D drive onto a 16GB SD card, that card reads as "Used Space 5.24GB", have I missed anything that should have been backed up? or is the other 9.76GB Windows?


I have downloaded Gpart and saved to desktop, but when I try to open it I get a box saying, "you have chosen to open gparted-live-0.13.1-2.iso", the default is Firefox and there is a drop down box with "other" in it, when I click on this I cannot see what will open this application, any ideas? I did this yesterday with the same result, I have uninstalled it then installed again today.

.

Toxteth_OGrady

You've downloaded a bootable CD image (iso). You would have to burn to a blank CD with Imgburn (or similar) then boot your PC from the CD.

Alternatively you could try the free Easus Partition Master Home Edition that will run in Windows.

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

You can get an idea of how to do it here

derrick

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

You've downloaded a bootable CD image (iso). You would have to burn to a blank CD with Imgburn (or similar) then boot your PC from the CD.

Alternatively you could try the free Easus Partition Master Home Edition that will run in Windows.

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

You can get an idea of how to do it here

OK, thanks for this one

After downloading it and a few hours of "mastering" it, several c*ckups, one total loss of D drive and several reboots I finally have the following and am happy to keep this: -

C drive: -
Capacity, 34.9GB
Used,..... 18.1GB
Free,...... 16.8

D drive: -
Capacity,. 41.7GB
Used,...... 5.65GB
Free,..... 36.00GB

Now this totals 76.6GB, HD is 80GB?

I do not appear to have lost anything, but only time will tell.



.