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I have a Sony PCV-RS520 computer, Pentium 4, 3GHZ , 512 Mb DDR, 160 GB hard drive. I've had it for 3 years and was computer illiterate when I bought it. Windows XP was pre-installed. Pretty much started it up and let it configure itself. It partitioned itself into a 6.0 GB drive with no designation, a 13.9 GB C: drive, and a 129 GB D: drive.
Well, pretty soon the C: drive is filling up and the computer's telling me it can't function without more space on C:. I discover I have a D: drive, drag my photos, music, documents over there, and things go fine for a while. Of course with additional software, windows updates and security updates, C:drive once again fills up. I start one by one removing software: first, printmaster, then extraneous photo and music software, and then the kid's programs. Still it fills up and I am down to a minimum amount of programs. And yet there is this large empty area over on D: drive.
This is how I plan to deal with it. First, I bought an external 300 GB drive, installed Norton Ghost, and have backed C:,D: drives onto the external drive using Ghost. I have also copied my music, photos, documents to the external drive without Ghost. Using the disk management program in Windows XP, I am going to delete the Logical, Extended partitiion D: drive, leaving me hopefully only with a large C: drive.
(START>CONTROL PANEL>PERFORMANCE AND MAINTENANCE>ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS>COMPUTER MANAGEMENT>STORAGE>DISK MANAGEMENT)
I can add an actual internal D: drive later.
My question: How much trouble am I going to get into doing this? Am I better off backing up my documents, then hitting the Viao recovery icon which takes it back to its original factory condition (no boot disk comes with the computer), making sure no D: drive is created, then install a new security program, and wait for hours for Windows to update and re-install all my other software? This seems a longer and more complicated procedure.
Any help of course is appreciated, Thanks.
Well, pretty soon the C: drive is filling up and the computer's telling me it can't function without more space on C:. I discover I have a D: drive, drag my photos, music, documents over there, and things go fine for a while. Of course with additional software, windows updates and security updates, C:drive once again fills up. I start one by one removing software: first, printmaster, then extraneous photo and music software, and then the kid's programs. Still it fills up and I am down to a minimum amount of programs. And yet there is this large empty area over on D: drive.
This is how I plan to deal with it. First, I bought an external 300 GB drive, installed Norton Ghost, and have backed C:,D: drives onto the external drive using Ghost. I have also copied my music, photos, documents to the external drive without Ghost. Using the disk management program in Windows XP, I am going to delete the Logical, Extended partitiion D: drive, leaving me hopefully only with a large C: drive.
(START>CONTROL PANEL>PERFORMANCE AND MAINTENANCE>ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS>COMPUTER MANAGEMENT>STORAGE>DISK MANAGEMENT)
I can add an actual internal D: drive later.
My question: How much trouble am I going to get into doing this? Am I better off backing up my documents, then hitting the Viao recovery icon which takes it back to its original factory condition (no boot disk comes with the computer), making sure no D: drive is created, then install a new security program, and wait for hours for Windows to update and re-install all my other software? This seems a longer and more complicated procedure.
Any help of course is appreciated, Thanks.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Sat, May 5, 2007 - 9:05 PMDeleting D won't leave you with a bigger C, you have to delet C as well and create a bigger partition with the un-partitioned space of C+D.
It won't be easy to re-partition C as long as windows starts from there.
And once you are done, you have to reinstall everything from scratch. NOT a good idea if you don't have a Windows CD.
There is a program called "Partition magic" that I think does exactly what you need (merge C and D):
www.symantec.com/home_home...erview.jsp
Double check with the vendor before buying though, since C can be hard to deal with (again, because the system runs from there).
In theory you shouldn't even backup (a good idea though, no matter what)
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Sat, May 5, 2007 - 10:46 PMDo not modify the C partition. Keep it around so you will have a viable system to boot from. XP supports booting from multiple partitions. Read up on how to choose which partition to boot from if you are not familiar with this capability.
The plan will be to transfer the C: partition to the D: partition using the images from Ghost on the external drive.
Verify the backups on the external drive of the D and C partitions. Erase the D partition. To the D: partition, restore the C image. Use your XP CD to repair the D drive, if necessary. You can choose which partition, C or D you want to boot off by holding down the F8 key during boot up.
There are several other methods. A variation on the one above involves installing a new XP installation on the D drive and then writing over it with the image from the external drive.
Working on the D: partition means that you can always still boot from the C: partition with your original system if the D: partition does not work.
Another method. Buy another internal harddrive. Use it to as a blank drive to make another, larger C: drive using the XP CD and restoring from the ghost images you have. Again, this allows you to not erase your original drives configuration until you've got things working properly...and to keep it as a backup should the new drive end up being a clunker.
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Sun, May 6, 2007 - 4:31 PMYou're not the first one to have this problem. My advice:
Keep the C: drive. Reinstalling Windows is more trouble than it's worth.
Create a D:\Program Files directory and reinstall your software over there. That should free up a lot of space on C:
Keep your data on the 300GB drive.
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Sun, May 6, 2007 - 10:01 PMUgh, but you don't want to run programs off a disk other than C. Reinstalling Windows is time consuming, but not terribly ugly. *shrug* My preference. -
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Sun, May 6, 2007 - 10:22 PMI had a similarly configured system and wound up installing my programs on D. It was the simplest workaround, all my programs worked just fine and it freed up the C: partition without having to start from scratch. As far as I know, programs will work on any partition. If you find one that doesn't, then install it on C and leave the rest on D
Having one big C: partition is my preference as well, but he doesn't have a Windows XP install CD, which makes starting from scratch a royal pain. -
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Mon, May 7, 2007 - 1:20 AMPartition magic resizes the partitions dynamically.
He still has to reinstall the programs that run from D (in case they have links or references to files on that drive), but (after a backup) he can merge C and D on the fly:
Key Features
* Divides a single hard drive into two or more partitions
* Lets you safely run multiple operating systems on the same PC
* BootMagic™ makes it easy to switch between different operating systems
* Allows you to copy, move, resize, split, or merge partitions as needed without losing data <-------
* How-to wizards guide you step by step through the partitioning process
* Intuitive Windows®-based browser lets you find, copy and paste files in both Windows and Linux® partitions
* Allows you to create and modify partitions up to 300 GB*
* Supports USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and FireWire® external drives**
* Supports FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems
* Converts partitions among FAT, FAT32, and NTFS without losing data
* Allows you to enlarge an NTFS partition without restarting your computer
* Resizes NTFS system clusters to the most effective size
* Supports operations on partition sizes as large as 300 GB when partition is less than 90% full. Larger hard drives may require additional memory.
** For these devices, operation on partitions with no open files. -
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Mon, May 7, 2007 - 10:42 AMI'll put in another vote for Partition Magic, which has worked well for me in the past.
Sony is almost unique in the industry for shipping machines in this idiotic default configuration with a tiny C: partition and huge D: partition that most users never use. It makes you wonder if they ever actually use Windows enough to understand why that's a bad idea.
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Mon, May 7, 2007 - 2:18 AMJust want you to know I am paying attention to all this. I have considered Partition Magic and a similar program from Acronis which other people who don't care for Norton recommended. Seems an easy solution, but I will check with customer service first. My initial plan above obviously not viable. The 6 GB undesignated partition on the drive I believe is where the Viao recovery wizard lives, which takes the computer back to it's original state. It is a primary partition like C: and not deletable from the disk management window. When I first started the computer it had me make a "Viao Recovery Wizard Recovery Media Kit." Don't know how much I trust that and if I loaded it, not sure at what point I could designate that I only want one large C: drive partition. Not a lot of literature on the subject.
But thanks for all the input. I did dial back the the space reserved for the Windows system restore function from 12% to 8 % which gave me 15% or 2GB free on the C: drive. Thinking about dialing it all the way back to 0% since I believe Norton GoBack duplicates that function. But that is still not a permanent solution. -
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Mon, May 7, 2007 - 10:32 AMWhether you decide to use the VAIO recovery or not, I strongly suggest you leave it there.
It will be very valuable if you decide to sell your computer in the future.
I am having a very hard time getting the drivers for the camera of a VAIO TR-3.
The camera was working before I decided to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows.
I went on the Sony US web site, but they don't have the exact model listed (it was bought in Hong Kong) and drivers for US TR-3 won't work.
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Mon, May 7, 2007 - 2:21 PMBack up everything first to an external drive. Ghost is fine for this. Make sure it works and understand how to get your data back. You want an exact image of the C: drive. An image of your C: drive is a bootable copy of it. If you only back up the files and folders you will have to reinstall Windows if you ever need anything other than a lost file or two. You need all the files and folders from the D: drive but it need not be a mirror image.
Resize the C: drive to be the entire size of the internal drive with a program designed to do this like Partition Magic . Some of them like PM have really retarded interfaces. You will need to delete the D: drive and the other partition on the internal drive. Programs like PM are special because they can resize the C: drive partition without destroying it or the data on it. Make sure the operation you choose is non-destructive to the C: drive.
Make a sensible folder structure on the C: drive to move everything that was on D: back to it from your backup.
If you had installed programs on the D: drive you will need to install them again. Hopefully, it's all data.
Once you verify it is all fine and dandy you can delete the backup and make a new backup of the new and improved C: drive. -
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Re: Who knows anything about Windows XP, Disk Management, and Partitions
Mon, May 14, 2007 - 9:03 AMUpdate on my problem. Went with Hyno and Giovanni's suggestions. Backed up with Norton Ghost which I already had previously as part of a package. Purchased Acronis Disk Manager 10 for about $40.00 because the customer reviews on Amazon rated it higher and said it had a better interface that Norton Partition Magic. The only difficulties I had were that Acronis wouldn't work till Norton Goback was disabled. I had to figure that out my self through Google. The disable process took well over an hour to complete with out being sure this was going to help. All the Goback restore points are lost in the process.
But everything went fine after that. The most time consuming parts of the process were reading and trying to understand the Norton Ghost user guide (and actual paper manual) which was 12 chapters long plus appendixes, and waiting for Goback to disable. The Acronis interface was very easy to use in automatic mode and took a relatively short amount of time to complete. I doubled the size of my C: Drive and then had to reset Norton Ghost and Goback (not re-install).
here is the program I used: www.acronis.com/homecomput...skdirector/
Thanks to everyone, especially Hypno and Giovanni
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