altering drive letters - C: (boot) drive too small

[jbreiner]

Okay, maybe I'm missing something, but I'm in a quandary: I have had my XP computer for awhile, works great though I can always use RAM, eh? My boot drive C has now gotten dangerously low on space, and I have removed everything that could possible save space. I have two other drives in the computer I can use. Is there a way to change the drive letters of one of the other drives and completely transfer the data from the C drive to one of them, thus making the new drive the main, boot drive? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[eyeCpc]

Prebuilt or custom case there? What sizes of drives are you working with? The way I would do that fast here(for custom not prebuilt) is to temporarily unplug the present host and setup one of the larger drives as the new host/OS drive to later copy what files are needed to it.

Changing drive letter designations is done while booted into Windows. All but the OS drive can see the drive letters changed. The drive Windows is installed onto should always be seen as C unless something went sideways during the installation like boot information lingering on the wrong drive.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

You have a couple of options to perform the needed options...the first would be to use a partition program such as partition magic to simply allocate more space to your c:\ from one of the other drives that have space...done and done...or you can simply clone your c:\ to one of the other drives and do it that way as well with norton ghost or something.

There are many other methods but one of those would be the quickest/easiest/least painful way to do it.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Wait I am sorry..for the partition reccomendation to work your c:\ and the drive you wish to allocate space from must be on the same physical drive. How many physical drives do you have in the unit and what are there partitions/drive letter assignments currently?

 

[KSoD]

Make a Image of your current C:\ Drive and then put the image on another drive. Use Acronis or Ghost to do this. Best option.

 

[jbreiner]

You have a couple of options to perform the needed options...the first would be to use a partition program such as partition magic to simply allocate more space to your c:\ from one of the other drives that have space...done and done...or you can simply clone your c:\ to one of the other drives and do it that way as well with norton ghost or something. There are many other methods but one of those would be the quickest/easiest/least painful way to do it.

I have two physical drives: the one with C; and D: on it and another, much larger G: drive. It is on that drive that I would like to copy it over to. Is there any catch? Once I copy it over, can I then format the old C drive for other uses? I know a bit about computers, but I am not professional geek so I need a little help here. I don't have Ghost but I do have LapLink, which I think has some of the same features.

ANy thoughts? Thanks, in advance, for any help.....Jerry

 

[jbreiner]

Prebuilt or custom case there? What sizes of drives are you working with? The way I would do that fast here(for custom not prebuilt) is to temporarily unplug the present host and setup one of the larger drives as the new host/OS drive to later copy what files are needed to it.

Changing drive letter designations is done while booted into Windows. All but the OS drive can see the drive letters changed. The drive Windows is installed onto should always be seen as C unless something went sideways during the installation like boot information lingering on the wrong drive.

Hello - Dell case and computer, though it has been altered 1000 ways since I first got it. 2 physical drive (the one that is partitioned C: and D and another larger G: drive. It is that drive I want to serve as the main boot drive, C:. I don't have Ghost but I do have LapLink, don't know if that would do what I need. I just need to get the entire contents of C: somewhere else with some ROOM. So, you're saying unplug the C drive currently in use and install XP on the G drive? Will the computer know to do that if I unplug the physical boot drive?

ANy help....thanks! Jerry

 

[jbreiner]

Hi Makaveli213 - Are either Acronis or Ghost available as a demo download? I don't own either one. (and PS Your wife has a great smile - too rare these days!)

 

[eyeCpc]

One free drive tool that will copy entire partitions from one drive to another is the Gnome Partition Editor more commonly known as GParted. Ghosting a drive with one of the programs already mentioned or copying the entire partition with GParted will save all files and folders to the second larger drive there. But you will end up in most cases needing to reinstall Windows in order to see a new mbr(master boot record) created during the reinstall.

The 0.3.3.0 release is the one to use for MS partitions as well as VFat for Linux being platform independent. That could save the time needed for opening up two explorer windows to highlight everything that will copy for the copy + paste type method.

Note the heading in the GParted documentation,

Copying a partition

Let's have a look on the copy fonction ! To activate it, you must first select the partition you want to copy ! (N.B. : the partition must be unmounted). GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - GENERALITIES

The 0.3.3.0 platform independent version is found about #15 down from the top at SourceForge.net: Files

For burning the 35mb iso disk image onto a cd-r made bootable you will need two things there. 1) cd writer or dvd burner 2) program that burns iso type images to see bootable disks not simply data burns.

The first item you have to provide there. BurnOn's free version and DeepBurner are two programs suitable for this. BurnOn is found at BurnOn CD & DVD - Free DVD Burning Software - Freeware CD burner Windows XP & Vista

 

[EricB]

move your documents folder

http://www.techist.com/forums/f9/how-keep-winxp-really-fast-stable-156582/