Jim in Anchorage Posted February 21, 2010 Author Posted February 21, 2010 All that will tell you is what you have available to work with, should you use a program to repartition the hard drive. For example, here is a screen shot of my laptop's disk management page: http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5061/diskqw.jpg My laptop has one physical drive, but is divided into two partitions. This shows that my C drive/partition is 99 GB and my D partition is 11.75 GB. As you can see, I also have a small amount of space (1 GB) that is not assigned to any drive letter. In my computer the D drive is a recovery drive. That contains the original setup and is to be used if I have to reformat the drive and reinstall. In my case, I leave the D drive alone, for that purpose. We know you have at least three partitions, as you described in the 1st post. The only way you have a 160 GB drive is if you have a large amount of space that is not assigned to any drive letter. In Vista, you could actually repartition your drive from this console. Unfortunately, you can't do that in XP. The programs I recommended earlier are used for that purpose. You need to merge the C drive with one, or both, of your other partitions and any large unused space if it is available. As Doc notes, you may have to clear a little space on the C drive to simply get started. Moving or deleting pictures or music would help, A disk cleaning would help you get more space. (There are great free tools, like CCleaner for that, but you probably don't want to install more on the computer right now.) Reducing the System Restore usage will also help free up some space to make this a little more manageable. If you are concerned about losing data, you might simply try to merge the space the E drive is using (40 GB) into the C drive. You will end up with a 60 GB C drive and since there is nothing in the E drive you should have no problems. But I think the software is capable of merging drives without impacting data, so I would go ahead and make one C drive of the all the available space (merge the D and E drives). It might take a while to perform that merge, but not hours, I don't believe. Note: If your D drive is labeled as "Recovery" in Disk Management, leave it alone. That turns out to be the case. In Disk management I found two drives labeled unallocated that bought the total to 182 GB.
The Dean Posted February 21, 2010 Posted February 21, 2010 That turns out to be the case. In Disk management I found two drives labeled unallocated that bought the total to 182 GB. The person who set up your drive must have been high, or something. I wonder why he/she decided to give you 3 small partitions and leave out 1/2 of the disk space? If that's the case, just take all the unallocated space and merge it into the C drive. Leave the D partition alone for now. That's what I would probably do, anyway.
Jim in Anchorage Posted February 21, 2010 Author Posted February 21, 2010 The person who set up your drive must have been high, or something. I wonder why he/she decided to give you 3 small partitions and leave out 1/2 of the disk space? If that's the case, just take all the unallocated space and merge it into the C drive. Leave the D partition alone for now. That's what I would probably do, anyway. Learned in the 80's I think. As she explained it to me if not for the partitions the computer would have search for the operating program and be slow. Anyway I would have just replaced the hard drive long ago but she put some expensive programs[at no cost to me] on it like power point that I don't want to lose.
/dev/null Posted February 21, 2010 Posted February 21, 2010 That turns out to be the case. In Disk management I found two drives labeled unallocated that bought the total to 182 GB. I wish there was an emoticon for dumbass smoking pot, because that's the only possible explanation for why what you described happened
The Dean Posted February 21, 2010 Posted February 21, 2010 Learned in the 80's I think. As she explained it to me if not for the partitions the computer would have search for the operating program and be slow.Anyway I would have just replaced the hard drive long ago but she put some expensive programs[at no cost to me] on it like power point that I don't want to lose. Wow. Anyway, if you ever happen to lose a program like PowerPoint (for example) there is often a free (open source) alternative that is very good. Open Office is a fully functioning office suite that is shockingly good. In fact, for those used to MS Office prior to 2007, it may be easier to make the transition to Open Office than it is to go to MS Office 2007. http://www.openoffice.org/ Some reviews: http://download.cnet.com/OpenOffice-org/30...4-10263109.html http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?...fice+3.1+review http://blogs.computerworld.com/review_of_f...icrosoft_office
Jim in Anchorage Posted February 21, 2010 Author Posted February 21, 2010 I wish there was an emoticon for dumbass smoking pot, because that's the only possible explanation for why what you described happened See my post above. Nice gal.means the best, but I don't think she stays up to date
Frit0 Bandit0 Posted February 21, 2010 Posted February 21, 2010 Yeah this is not a help desk issue...I've seen something before of what your talking about concerning the hard drive size... your D drive should only be 2-4gig and poss. in fat32 .. for system backup file (multiple partitions to help quicken the process speed is old school, antiquated and not needed any longer) quick fix short term 1)Get a 4-8gig thumb drive (usb) and move your video files over to it...til you get a handle on what needs to be done... 2) once you acquire some extra space download and run PC WIZARD at the bottom of the page see ZIP package : PC Wizard can be run directly from removable support (CD/DVD, USB Key, ...) Options are not saved. Don't forget to check "Use Folder Names" into your UNZIP application to create PC Wizard folders. It's free open source and an absolute gem ... this program will give you every detail about the computer including temps (highly recommended program and very sound) This is a good starting point to work from
Virgil Posted February 21, 2010 Posted February 21, 2010 Yeah, listen to Dean on this one. I can maybe see someone setting up multiple partitions like that, like 15 years ago, but not today with the speeds of hard drives and other pieces. You really just need to consolidate. Also, with the cost of external hard drives being so cheap, I really recommend having one that does an auto back-up once a week of your core docs. It's really worth it.
thebug Posted February 22, 2010 Posted February 22, 2010 Update? He can't, he doesn't have any free space.
Jim in Anchorage Posted February 22, 2010 Author Posted February 22, 2010 Update? He can't, he doesn't have any free space. Close to the truth. I couldn't download the Partition program Dean suggested because surprise! no where to put it. I may have to order the disk it's self.
thebug Posted February 22, 2010 Posted February 22, 2010 Close to the truth. I couldn't download the Partition program Dean suggested because surprise! no where to put it. I may have to order the disk it's self. Do you have any large programs you can uninstall and just re-install when you have the room? (assuming you have the CD).
Jim in Anchorage Posted February 22, 2010 Author Posted February 22, 2010 Do you have any large programs you can uninstall and just re-install when you have the room? (assuming you have the CD). Done all that. I suspect there are things on C I am not seeing. When I open it the total is nowhere near 20 GB.
thebug Posted February 23, 2010 Posted February 23, 2010 Done all that. I suspect there are things on C I am not seeing. When I open it the total is nowhere near 20 GB. Is your computer set to "show hidden files and folders" the "temp" directory under "local settings" can get quite large?
Jim in Anchorage Posted February 23, 2010 Author Posted February 23, 2010 Is your computer set to "show hidden files and folders" the "temp" directory under "local settings" can get quite large? How would I know?
Doc Posted February 23, 2010 Posted February 23, 2010 Done all that. I suspect there are things on C I am not seeing. When I open it the total is nowhere near 20 GB. You ran "disk cleanup?" And did you try to download the partition program to the "D" drive?
thebug Posted February 23, 2010 Posted February 23, 2010 You ran "disk cleanup?" And did you try to download the partition program to the "D" drive? "disk cleanup" doesn't empty that temp directory.
Doc Posted February 23, 2010 Posted February 23, 2010 "disk cleanup" doesn't empty that temp directory. True, but it can cleanup other files and recover a decent amount of space. At least enough to get things running again.
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