C:\ needs more space

Phobious

Hey guys,

Working a on PC for a mate and need to know the best solutions for this.

C:\ is like 5gb with XP pro on it and is constantly reporting that its out of space. Im fed up cleaning it out and moving programs to the D drive so I want get this fixed.

What I am looking to do is make a ghost image of the C drive and backup the D drive. Then re partition both and install the ghost. Can someone recommend me a good program for this or a better solution?

Also the D drive has many programs installed so I would like if I could move all the programs back to C after being repartitioned without reinstalling them all is there a way to do it?

Thanks

woolymammoth

Assuming from your post thaat the two drives are partitions of the same disk, here's a better idea that will hopefully save you some time and effort. Lookup & download a partition editor. Partition Wizard Home Edition is a good one i've used before. Run CCleaner to clean up the PC, run a defrag, then edit the partitions, making the D drive smaller, then making the C drive bigger. no need for messing around with ghost at all. As for the apps, you'll likely have to reinstall them all!

Capt'n Midnight

use spacemonger to find out what is really using the space

move swap file to d:

uniinstall and reinstall programs is the best way
but if you don't mind reistalling if everything goes pear shaped and you are using an olde version of windows you could use the subst command to map to C: (or better still a folder on C: if you want to preserve some sanity) on a logon script
its scary monsters indeed

there is a way of using symbolic links in windows for files, never ventured into doing it for folders though

'tis a right pain in the arse looking for program settings that refer to a drive, be they in the registry or other config files or in some programs hard coded :mad:

humaxf1

**cleanup** is a great tool for clearing temp crap.

i find ccleaner takes a while to liven up and get in gear when scanning for crap.

Phobious

I will try the Partition Wizard first, but im going to do a full backup on the system just in case can you recommend the best program for this in your experiance?

woolymammoth

the whole PC? or just data/files?

you could do an NT backup to disk. You could use Ghost if you do have it to just image the whole disk as a backup. you can use other backup software to backup to disk.. syncback, synctoy, cobian backup. if it less than 2gigs of files, dropbox, some other online backup service..

Phobious

The whole PC ill would probably back it up over the network!

woolymammoth

well, do you want the whole PC backed up asa disaster recovery incase it all goes pearshaped, and you need to restore the PC to exactly how it was? then make a ghost image of the PC, saving to a network share. that would be the easiest if you had to restore it. This is not so easy for accessing the files though.

If you just want a backup to access any files / folders all over the PC, use cobian, or syncback, or synctoy. They need to run inside windows though and might not open some files that are in use to back them up.

option C is to convert the physical disk to a virtual disk that can be mounted and accessed elsewhere. there's a sysinternals tool called disk2vhd that will do this. you can mound this vhd in Win 7, you'll have to look into mounting the VHD in XP for yourself.

CaSCaDe711

Browsing the C partiton tonight, trying to free some space, noticed Nokia software is taking up almost 1GB!, even though I installed all their programs to the D partition.

Looking in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data

Nokia
Nokia Service Layer (544MB)
Nokia Software Updater (143 bytes)

NokiaInstallerCache
PackageCache = 315MB (5 folders, all containing a large .msi file in a Setup folder)
ProductCache = 137MB (.log files, plus a large (100,502KB) installer.exe)

Is it safe to delete the .msi files..? and whatever I see in any Installer Cache folders..?

Thanks.

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Skype
{24D753CA-6AE9-4E30-8F5F-EFC93E08BF3D}
Skype.msi (18.2MB)
{D103C4BA-F905-437A-8049-DB24763BBE36}
Skype.msi (16MB)
{E633D396-5188-4E9D-8F6B-BFB8BF3467E8}
Skype.msi (17.1MB)

CaSCaDe711

CaSCaDe711 wrote: »

Browsing the C partiton tonight, trying to free some space, noticed Nokia software is taking up almost 1GB!, even though I installed all their programs to the D partition.

Looking in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data

Nokia
Nokia Service Layer (544MB)
Nokia Software Updater (143 bytes)

NokiaInstallerCache
PackageCache = 315MB (5 folders, all containing a large .msi file in a Setup folder)
ProductCache = 137MB (.log files, plus a large (100,502KB) installer.exe)

Is it safe to delete the .msi files..? and whatever I see in any Installer Cache folders..?

Thanks.

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Skype
{24D753CA-6AE9-4E30-8F5F-EFC93E08BF3D}
Skype.msi (18.2MB)
{D103C4BA-F905-437A-8049-DB24763BBE36}
Skype.msi (16MB)
{E633D396-5188-4E9D-8F6B-BFB8BF3467E8}
Skype.msi (17.1MB)

BUMP

biko

You can download and use ccleaner as suggested by humaxf1.
http://www.piriform.com/

Piriform also has a good defragger - Defraggler.

Do you have a pagefile.sys? How big is your RAM?
You can stop using pagefile, that will free up a lot of space.
If you find that the PC gets a lot slower from not using pagefile you can just enable it again. I have 2gb ram and don't notice any difference.

CaSCaDe711

Thanks for the suggestions Biko. Never thought of disabling pagefile.sys, will do that so.

Regularly use CCleaner, Defraggler (and Glary Utilities), all very good software. Will either remove the duplicates using Glary, or delete manually, and see if it has any adverse effects. Can backup using Clonzilla beforehand.

Capt'n Midnight

biko wrote: »

If you find that the PC gets a lot slower from not using pagefile you can just enable it again. I have 2gb ram and don't notice any difference.

XP actively swaps stuff out of memory early (fine if you have 128MB and lack of ram is a problem )

rule of thumb is that if you have more than 768MB ram and rarely max out then you should remove the swap file to speed up things

later versions of windows don't swap stuff out till they need to