Hard drive partition question

PhoenixRising

Hi,

I should probably start off by saying that I know very little about HD partitions.

My laptop shows up 2 hard drives in 'my computer', one is 30GB (C) and the other is 20GB (D) in size. Now I presume that this is just a paritioned hard drive rather than 2 seperate ones. The 30GB drive is the one where all files are being written to, and the other 20GB drive is completely empty. My problem is that the 30GB drive is almost full. Once it's completely full, will files then be written to the other drive or do I need to remove the partition?

wayne040576

No,

You will have to specifically save items to d: yourself. Or you can move any documents\files that you don't use that much onto d: and therefore free up some space on c:

You could also use a tool like partition magic to merge the two parttions into one.

I am assuming that you know for a fact that there is only 1 physical drive in the machine?

Mac daddy

you can expand the partion your c: drive by using for instance partition magic ( normally not recommended. - your hdd the way it looks like one drive with two logical volume's your C:and expand the c: by reducing the or merge them its up to you.

PhoenixRising

wayne040576 wrote:

I am assuming that you know for a fact that there is only 1 physical drive in the machine?

Well I'm pretty sure. Is there any way to find out for definite.

Mac daddy wrote:

you can expand the partion your c: drive by using for instance partition magic ( normally not recommended. - your hdd the way it looks like one drive with two logical volume's your C:and expand the c: by reducing the or merge them its up to you.

Ok, so what's the easier option, expand the partition or just merge the two?

Cheers lads.

duridian

I am assuming you are using Windows XP here, but the easiest way to tell if there is 1 hard or 2 is to look in Device Manager.
Quickest way to get to this is:
> Right click on the "My Computer" icon, (you can use either use the icon in the Start Menu or the desktop if you have the icon there)
> In the menu that appears select "Properties"
> Click the "Hardware" tab and then the "Device Manager" button
> In "Device Manager" window, look in the top menubar under "View" and ensure that it is set to view "Devices by type"
> Now in the main section, expand "Disk Drives" by clicking the "+" symbol in front of it.
If there is only one drive listed in there then you have only 1 actual physical hard disk in your system which has probably been partitioned into a C: and drives.
Given that you are speaking of a laptop here I'd say it is highly unlikely that you have more than one hard drive and that it is more than likely just partitioned.
Merging would probably make more sense in case this running out of space problem pops up again. Be very careful though, messing about with partitions can lose you all your data if something goes wrong in the changeover. Make sure that anything which you can't afford to lose is backed up before doing anything of this nature.

vibe666

or you could right click on my computer and go to 'manage' and then choose 'disk management' which will list all the disks you have (hard drives, CDROM's, flash disks etc.) and how they are partitioned and formatted.

this is not a good place to do non-destructive re-partitioning, but will allow you to see exactly what you have under the hood.

whilst 2 hard drives in a laptop are uncommon, it's not unheard of, so don't go assuming they are one drive just yet.

if you have the original installation media for your bigger applications (like office etc.) then you can uninstall them and re-inatall them on the D drive to create more space.

you can also do things to help you increase the free space on the drive, like doing an automated disk cleanup (under start, accessories, system tools), but steer clear of 'compress old files' as it's pain in the hole and can cause performance issues down the line.

turning system restore off and then back on again can also free up space if you're sure you're not going to need them.

PhoenixRising

Ok, thanks for responses. I think I'll just try to merge the partitions as I've just got one physical drive with a partition. Is there any other way of doing this without having to spend $70 on Partition Magic?

vibe666

there are free tools out there that will do it, but I use partition magic, so I've no need to know what they are.

one of the other guys here will know i'm sure.