C Drive running low.

[Steve M]

Hi everyone.
I'm using a laptop running Vista. My Vista (C) drive is at "4.72 GB free of 93.1 GB". My other drives are Local disk D which has 174GB free and data F which has 86.5 free. Is there any way of transferring memory from D or F to C, to prevent it running out?

Please keep in mind when answering this question that when it comes to the technical stuff I'm a bit dumb!

[hartbeatmr]

Good morning Steve M and welcome to CH

I don't think you are dumb you just need some help and that is why we are here

Most of your items (pictures, documents and music) can very easily moved. By default your document folder houses: Music, pictures, doc's, download folder etc.

Here is what you can do

      Click on the Start button. Right-click on Document. Select Properties. In the Properties dialog select the Location tab. Next, click on Move. In the Destination dialog select the new location for your Documents folder. Click on Select Folder to return to the Properties dialog. The new location appears in the text box. Click on Ok. Vista prompts you to confirm again and with a Yes click your task is done as the documents get shifted over to the new location.

If this is not what you want to do please let us know, Mike

[Allan]

1) Actually, all you need to do to move MY DOCUMENTS is open Windows Explorer, right-click on the MY DOCUMENTS folder, drag it to the new location, release the mouse key and click on "MOVE".

2) If you reduce the space allotted to System Restore you will free up a LOT of space immediately (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/)

3) If you haven't already done so, delete everything in your TEMP folder

4) Move your Temporary Internet Files Folder to a drive other than C:

[Steve M]

Thanks for your replies, guys. I have moved a bunch of files to my D drive. However I'm still running low.

The thing is, one software package I use is designed to be used on the c drive and access the stuff it needs from there. That's why I want to move memory from other drives to the C drive, rather than move files. Any easy way to do that?

[Allan]

Just a terminology thing - "memory" refers to ram. You need to increase disc space on c: drive

Try Easeus Partition Master
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

[patio]

Thanks for your replies, guys. I have moved a bunch of files to my D drive. However I'm still running low.

The thing is, one software package I use is designed to be used on the c drive and access the stuff it needs from there. That's why I want to move memory from other drives to the C drive, rather than move files. Any easy way to do that?

What is this mystery app that is doing this ? ?

[Steve M]

Right, I mean disc space, not memory. Not very good with terminology computer wise, obviously. I'll have a look at Partition Master, as I think the solution is something to do with partitions (whatever the heck they are!).

The sofware that needs the C drive is Daz Studio, a 3d rendering package. It automatically looks for content on C drive/documents/daz studio/my library. No doubt it can be told to use a diferent drive, but it can be a bit tempramental at times and I think increasing space on the C drive might be easier.

[sarcasticphoenix]

This might be a "last resort", but compressing large files can free up a tiny bit of space.
For example, if you get the program 7zip, you could zip up some files you don't use as often to free up disk space.
However, you might have to unzip the files when accessing them, that might be annoying, but if there are any files that you don't use but want to keep, I would recommend compressing them with a program such as 7zip or WinRar.

[immental1200]

This might be a "last resort", but compressing large files can free up a tiny bit of space.
For example, if you get the program 7zip, you could zip up some files you don't use as often to free up disk space.
However, you might have to unzip the files when accessing them, that might be annoying, but if there are any files that you don't use but want to keep, I would recommend compressing them with a program such as 7zip or WinRar.

This is useless as it just increases the time to get at files, the compression isn't going to be effective whatosever.

[Steve M]

Just a terminology thing - "memory" refers to ram. You need to increase disc space on c: drive

Try Easeus Partition Master
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

I used Partition Master to move space from F drive to C drive, giving me an extra 45 GB, so it worked a treat, thanks!
I still have a lot of unused space on the D drive, but partition master doesn't seem to let me move/allocate some of it to C drive, because C drive is on disc one and D drive is on disc 2, apparently. Any way around that?

Again, thanks for your help. Hopefully the extra 45GB should last quite a while.

[Salmon Trout]

I still have a lot of unused space on the D drive, but partition master doesn't seem to let me move/allocate some of it to C drive, because C drive is on disc one and D drive is on disc 2, apparently. Any way around that?

You can map a folder or a partition to a junction point (a kind of special fake folder) on another drive using the MKLINK command. For example if you ran this command at the prompt...

Code: [Select]

mklink /D C:\D-Drive D:\
...you would have a (fake) folder named "D-Drive" in the root of C:\ which you could use just like any other folder on C:\ but which actually pointed to the whole of drive D:

(Using my example name) to remove the mapping:

in Explorer: delete the fake directory C:\D-Drive.
at the command prompt: rmdir "C:\D-Drive"
 
Note this would not delete data -- such as folders or files you had created, copied or moved there -- this would still be on drive D

[Salmon Trout]

Hopefully the extra 45GB should last quite a while.

You'll run out again if you don't take the proper approach, which is to sensibly use the disk space you have available to you. You have already been given some good suggestions. Try making the DAZ app use a folder under a junction point, as I described above. Possibly another thing you can do is buy a bigger hard drive. If you are afraid to do this because of not being a techie, any good computer repair store should be able to clone your existing hard drive to a bigger one and set up the partitions. 320 or 500 GB hard drives are not all that expensive these days.

[Steve M]

[quote author=Steve M link=topic=132718.msg859387#msg859387 date=1346483963Hopefully the extra 45GB should last quite a while.

You'll run out again if you don't take the proper approach, which is to sensibly use the disk space you have available to you. You have already been given some good suggestions. Try making the DAZ app use a folder under a junction point, as I described above. Possibly another thing you can do is buy a bigger hard drive. If you are afraid to do this because of not being a techie, any good computer repair store should be able to clone your existing hard drive to a bigger one and set up the partitions. 320 or 500 GB hard drives are not all that expensive these days.

Thanks,

As I am nowhere near to being a techie, probably my best option would be to buy a bigger hard drive when I have some spare cash, and have them install it and clone my existing drive, which I assume copies all the folders and files to the new one. Would my other drives (F and D) also be cloned onto this new hard drive in this process?

[Salmon Trout]

Would my other drives (F and D) also be cloned onto this new hard drive in this process?

It sounds from your previous posts as if you have 2 physical hard drives:

1. one drive containing 2 partitions C: and F:
2. another drive D:

Is this right? Or are they all on the one physical hard drive?

[Steve M]

There just the hard drive that's inside the machine, we've never added any external kinds of drive or anything (apart from using a flash drive for backing stuff up and so on). I assume that means there's just the one internal drive? I'll try and post a picture of My Computer drives:



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