[fowlermj]

Hey guys -

My wife has a Dell laptop that was partitioned by GeekSquad when she purchased it. Its hard drive is currently configured like this:



She wasn't ever instructed to do anything drive-related, as in installing programs on one, data on another, so she's maxed the 58.9GB allotted on the OS drive. The D drive, currently 229GB, can not be shrunk using the Win 7 utility (in order to increase the size of the OS drive where everything resides).

I'm still running XP on my machine, using a separate internal HDD for a backup, and I'm a bit new to partitioning like this. As I understand it she's expected to have left the main OS drive alone, perhaps installing programs there, but to use the D: drive for images, music, etc - anything that takes up space. If that's not correct or there's some easier way to accomplish all that than simply remembering it every time you save or install something, please let me know.

Regardless of whether she manages her computer effectively going forward, any ideas on how to adapt to the current situation? I could move all her data to the D drive and tell her to "please, next time you save something select the other drive." I just don't think that's a long term solution and am not sure she'll remember that procedure. Is there a way to simply adjust the size of the D drive and increase space available for the OS drive?

Thanks in advance.

-M

PS: I do appreciate the utility of having a drive partitioned, I'm just getting a lot of push back on the whole "save to another drive" thing.

PPS: Sorry if this is deemed a redundant question. I did search for the topic but nothing I found seemed to address this specific situation.

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Well you can tell Windows to use d: drive (for example) for My Documents, temporary files, downloads, etc. and that will help. But still, whenever she installs a new program or copies a file, she will have to be conscious of her actions. This typically requires she ALWAYS select the custom install option to then select the drive and folder location she wants, instead of the program automatically installing under C:program files somewhere. The custom install option is always recommended anyway so you have the opportunity to opt out of having any unnecessary/unwanted extra stuff foisted on your system (like toolbars and auto-updaters).

I recommend you see what programs can be moved to d. Note this will best be done by uninstalling and reinstalling those programs to ensure the Registry is properly updated.

Also, I recommend purging the hard drives of clutter with Windows 7 Disk Cleanup (scroll down for text instructions).

As for resizing partitions, I use and like EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition – formally Partition Magic, which is free for home, non-commercial use.

However, no partition manipulation comes without risk so I would urge you to backup any files she does not want to lose before using this.

[Digerati]

Well you can tell Windows to use d: drive (for example) for My Documents, temporary files, downloads, etc. and that will help. But still, whenever she installs a new program or copies a file, she will have to be conscious of her actions. This typically requires she ALWAYS select the custom install option to then select the drive and folder location she wants, instead of the program automatically installing under C:program files somewhere. The custom install option is always recommended anyway so you have the opportunity to opt out of having any unnecessary/unwanted extra stuff foisted on your system (like toolbars and auto-updaters).

I recommend you see what programs can be moved to d. Note this will best be done by uninstalling and reinstalling those programs to ensure the Registry is properly updated.

Also, I recommend purging the hard drives of clutter with Windows 7 Disk Cleanup (scroll down for text instructions).

As for resizing partitions, I use and like EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition – formally Partition Magic, which is free for home, non-commercial use.

However, no partition manipulation comes without risk so I would urge you to backup any files she does not want to lose before using this.

[happyrock]

just a side note...GeekSquad put your pagefile on the slowest part of the drive unless its a SSD drive
this setup only has a speed advantage if there are 2 physical drive...when there is only 1 drive it will actually slow down your system

[fowlermj]

Thanks for the tips, guys (and apologies for the delayed response). I'm going to move all of her media/pictures to the D drive and then try to get her to save new files and install programs in the future to D as well. About half the OS drive is taken up by these files alone, so it should be easy to free this space up.

I'm running into a bit of a dilemma though. The D drive is supposedly 229.63GB, and I currently have 44GB free. I can't seem to see exactly what's taking up all that space. I can only see about 4GB taken up by pagefile.sys and the rest totals maybe 1MB. Showing hidden files didn't reveal anything, so I'm at a loss. What's taking up the other mystery 180GB?

I was hoping it'd just be a simple drag-and-drop to move these files over, but I'd like to figure out what's up with this space discrepancy now, before I do that. Otherwise I figure I'll just be delaying having to deal with it again when the remaining 15GB (what would be left free on D after I move the 29GB of media from the OS drive) is taken up.

Thanks in advance!

-M

[happyrock]

try this...write down how much free space you have then delete hiberfil.sys file then check your freespace again

Deleting and restoring hiberfil.sys

It has become common to have a rather small volume for the C: system drive. It has also become common to have 4GB or more of RAM. This means that hiberfil.sys can take up a substantial portion of your system drive. If drive space becomes critical, you may wish to delete the hiberfil.sys file and turn off hibernation. Because hiberfil.sys is a super-hidden system file, the usual way to delete a file does not apply. However, there is a very simple way that uses the command line run as administrator.

Open a command prompt run as administrator and enter
powercfg –h off
press enter

To restore the file enter
powercfg –h on