Partitioned hard drive

[honey lamb]

Last year I got a Sony Vaio laptop for travel which, after I bought it I realised it had a partitioned hard drive. After my Gateway PC many moons ago I swore I would avoid them like the plague but I'm afraid the plague has caught up with me [:(!]. In spite of evrything that we can move being moved from the C drive we are forever getting messages to say it is nearly full (which drove me mad on my Gateway)

Is there an easy way that a klutz like me can de-partition a hard drive or is there a simple solution which is staring me in the face but I cannot see it?

Easiest way to do it on the fly (i.e without going into DOS and using FDISK etc and doing a re-install) is to use specialist software like ranish partition manager or Partition magic etc

http://www.ranish.com/
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice ... &pvid=pm80

Hope this helps

[honey lamb]

Originally posted by GreboDB
Easiest way to do it on the fly (i.e without going into DOS and using FDISK etc and doing a re-install) is to use specialist software like ranish partition manager or Partition magic etc

http://www.ranish.com/
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice ... &pvid=pm80

Hope this helps

Thanks for that, but looking at it (and bear in mind that I am a bear of very little brain) it seems to me that those links are to partition a hard drive but I want to remove the partition - unless someone gives me a good reason why I shouldn't

If you remove the operating partition then the laptop will cease to work !
Can you explain what you are trying to achieve? Is it that the C: partition is very small but you have lots of space on the D: drive? Have you tried moving the swap file from C: to D: ?
If you right click on "MY computer" and select "Manage" go into "Disk Management" what are the drives listed with space used and available?
This is Mr DL here who needs more info in order to help resolve your problem.

If you look at features for partition magic for example, it says :

Allows you to copy, move, resize, split, or merge partitions as needed without losing data

You want to merge two partitions into one (i.e take your C and D drive and merge them together into 1 larger single C drive) by the sound of it or have I misunderstood?

The best option is to backup the second partition (as this be you non system partition), delete all files in this partition, use partition magic to delete the 2nd partition and expand the first to fill the entire disk without loosing data on the first partition, then copy the backup files from the 2nd partition back onto the new larger partition.

Other than that you have another option.

Buy a larger replacement disc for your laptop plus one or 2 external USB enclosures for the drives; clone the first partition onto the new drive allowing it to expand the partition as it goes then copy the data from the 1st drive 2nd partition onto the new drive, then physically swapped the discs over.

Acronis True Image will let you perform either option.

Paul

[honey lamb]

Thanks, everyone for your input. I'm trying to work my way through them as best I can with my limited understanding [:I]

Originally posted by DragonLady
If you remove the operating partition then the laptop will cease to work !
Can you explain what you are trying to achieve? Is it that the C: partition is very small but you have lots of space on the D: drive? Have you tried moving the swap file from C: to D: ?
If you right click on "MY computer" and select "Manage" go into "Disk Management" what are the drives listed with space used and available?
This is Mr DL here who needs more info in order to help resolve your problem.

Mr DL, thank you, yes that is exactly it. The C: drive is small and full and the D:drive has lots of space. Anything we installed we did so on the D: drive and I have removed a couple of my files hich happened to be on the C;drive but to no avail.

When I go into Disk Management I get the following:

C: Drive Capacity 27.95 GB, Free Space 314 MB, 1% Free
D: Drive Capacity 40.99 GB, Free Space 18.39 GB, 44% Free
Recovery Partition Capacity 5.59 GB, Free Space 977 MB, 17% Free

Thanks for your help

I know what you are going through. My Vaio laptop is exactly the same, poor C drive size compared to the D drive, as most programmes want to install to the C drive its frustrating.

I am in two minds wether to just get a new laptop with a bigger hard drive, or install an larger hard drive.

Hi,
Short term you could try the following:-
Right click "My Computer" and go into properties then select the "Advanced" tab.
You then select the "Settings" button under "Performance" which will bring up the performance options. Select the "Advanced" tab and then under "Virtual Memory" it will give the size of the swap file. Select "Change" to bring up the Virtual Memory settings whereby the C: drive will be highlighted and it will give you the paging size being used. Usually these are around 1.5GB to 3GB, write these down - Initial size (MB) and Maximum size (MB).
Now select the D: drive, click "Custom size" and then enter the values you previously noted. Click on the "SET" button and then "OK". "OK". "OK" to back out. You have now moved the swap file to the d: drive which should give you a little bit more space to play with.

The only other alternatives are to buy a piece of software such as Partition Magic which will resize the partition on the fly and move space from the D drive to the C drive.
If you have all of the software (Operating System and Applications) then you could try and reinstall the lot again after deleting both partitions and resizing to one partition. ( A bit extreme - I would buy Partition Magic).
The recovery partition is usually a self extractable file from which you can rebuild the laptop so it may be that you can save all the data to a USB drive, repartition the disk and then use the recovery mode (this is not guarantedd to work as it may resize the hard disk as part of the recovery procedure).
When installing applications to laptops with small C drive partitions always select Custom Mode and "tell" the software to install to d rather than c drive.

[honey lamb]

Originally posted by DragonLady
Hi,
Short term you could try the following:-
Right click "My Computer" and go into properties then select the "Advanced" tab.
You then select the "Settings" button under "Performance" which will bring up the performance options. Select the "Advanced" tab and then under "Virtual Memory" it will give the size of the swap file. Select "Change" to bring up the Virtual Memory settings whereby the C: drive will be highlighted and it will give you the paging size being used. Usually these are around 1.5GB to 3GB, write these down - Initial size (MB) and Maximum size (MB).
Now select the D: drive, click "Custom size" and then enter the values you previously noted. Click on the "SET" button and then "OK". "OK". "OK" to back out. You have now moved the swap file to the d: drive which should give you a little bit more space to play with.

The only other alternatives are to buy a piece of software such as Partition Magic which will resize the partition on the fly and move space from the D drive to the C drive.
If you have all of the software (Operating System and Applications) then you could try and reinstall the lot again after deleting both partitions and resizing to one partition. ( A bit extreme - I would buy Partition Magic).
The recovery partition is usually a self extractable file from which you can rebuild the laptop so it may be that you can save all the data to a USB drive, repartition the disk and then use the recovery mode (this is not guarantedd to work as it may resize the hard disk as part of the recovery procedure).
When installing applications to laptops with small C drive partitions always select Custom Mode and "tell" the software to install to d rather than c drive.

Thanks a million! [^] I'll try it when I get back from the US next week as I really don't have time now. Thanks for the help

[RichardMannion]

I presume you are running XP.

You dont need any 3rd party software. You can extend a partition natively with XP (in Vista you can also shrink). You should back up all your data to an external drive before using any utility to change the disk configuration though.

In regard to system pagefiles which DargonLady has mentioned, you can switch it off on the C: partition, and use 'System Managed Size' for D: - you will need to reboot to make any changes to pagefiles. You could also switch off System Restore to grab back space, and/or you could switch off Hibernation.

If it was me, I'd back up D: to an external disk, and then delete the D: partition, and then extend C: out to take the unallocated space (in your case creating a 68Gb partition). I can do you some detailed instructions if you want - I had to do this recently on a server at home as the system volume was running low on space.

Thanks,
Richard

Richard, I presume you are talking about using diskpart.exe ?
If so you are assuming a few things that "a bear of little brain" may have difficulty with. Also I thought this did not work on boot partitions?
If you are not using diskpart can you post detailed instructions so I may learn something new!

How did you get on Honey Lamb?
Did Richards detailed instructions help you out?

[honey lamb]

Originally posted by DragonLady
How did you get on Honey Lamb?
Did Richards detailed instructions help you out?

[:I][:I]
Twice I got hold of the laptop and twice cowardice prevailed [:I]

I still haven't tried it [:I]

[honey lamb]

OK, you shamed me into doing as you suggested. I did and when I re-booted the laptop it was no different. I went back in as you had suggested and the paging file size for the C: drive remained. What do I put in there?

ooops, sorry on reading my instructions again I realised I forgot to mention that once you have put the paging file on the d: drive highlight the C drive again and select the no paging file option.

[honey lamb]

Originally posted by DragonLady
ooops, sorry on reading my instructions again I realised I forgot to mention that once you have put the paging file on the d: drive highlight the C drive again and select the no paging file option.

Oooh! I'm feeling very pleased with myself. I chanced my arm and did exactly that, praying all the while that I wouldn't banjax the whole thing and voila! A sliver of pink appears on the pie-chart thingy on the C: drive properties page. [y] Then you post and tell me to do just that [^]

I can't remember how much more space I've got. It doesn't look like a lot but at least it is giving us a breathing space and that d*mn bubble isn't appearing in the task bar every time we log on.

Thanks ever so much for your help. It really is appreciated and if we ever meet at a social the drinks are on me!

No problem HL glad to have been of help- it'll give you a bit of breathing space. The only options now are either a re-build or partition manager. You could of course un-install some of the larger applications and reinstall them to the D drive. Any more problems then PM Mrs DL.

[honey lamb]

So, faced with the prospect of Aer John wanting to take the Sony Vaio to college next week when he commences his university education I finally bit the bullet and bought and downloaded Partition Manager. Oh dear! [:(]

For starters when I completed the download I didn't get the usual shiny graphics that one expects leading you from one page to another as you do whatever it is you want the download to do. Instead I got a dialogue box with loads of icons and clicking on several of them in turn I located the Partition Manager icon and clicked on it. At first I thought I was away with a hack but the next thing I got a dialogue box telling me that I needed to run setup.exe for a .msi file. After hyperventilating about this I managed to download setup.exe but when I tried again (and again and again) I failed miserably. Eventually I emailed the Symantec helpline who guaranteed a response within 24 hours. That was 33 hours ago and I have heard nothing. I have sent another email but I suspect I am writing to a machine [:(!]

I have spent good money on that download for nothing *cue violins*, poor widow woman that I am [:w]

Any suggestions? Pleeeease [:X]