Hard disk and system file deletion

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goldtech

I had (in the past) a partiton that I booted from. I now have a new
win2k install on another partion on my HD. So now the original partion
has system files still there but these old files are not used anymore.
Specifically things like MFT and pagefile.

I want to free up space on the old parttion now. But i can't delete or
even find the files on the old partition, pagefile sys is not findable
even with hidden file set to viewable.

Seems like the sytem has allocated "fossilized" space for the files and
I can not overide that.

Any help appreciated.
 
Unless you changed it, the default location for the page file is the boot
partition. Also note that Microsoft defines the boot partition for the
partition where the operating system is installed, while the system
partition is the first primary active partition (where the boot sector
resides) The system and boot partition can be the same partition.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

|I had (in the past) a partiton that I booted from. I now have a new
| win2k install on another partion on my HD. So now the original partion
| has system files still there but these old files are not used anymore.
| Specifically things like MFT and pagefile.
|
| I want to free up space on the old parttion now. But i can't delete or
| even find the files on the old partition, pagefile sys is not findable
| even with hidden file set to viewable.
|
| Seems like the sytem has allocated "fossilized" space for the files and
| I can not overide that.
|
| Any help appreciated.
|
 
If you can't find the files how do you know that they are still there?
Most likely (without knowing how you installed Windows 2000 on the other
partition) you will have to keep NTDETECT.COM, ntldr and boot.ini on the
partition. You might be able to reduce the default size of the Master
File Table (MFT) but you can't get rid of it, no file table = no files
on the disk!

John
 
I know the old system files are taking up space because the defrag
program i'm using shows me system files in a certain color as well as
identifying file names when I click on a block in the defrag gui...

thanks.
 
Move the files you want to keep off the partition them format it.
Remember that if the partition is the System Partition you MUST return
the 3 files I told you about earlier back to their original location
after you format. You cannot delete the MFT. Make sure that you have a
pagefile.sys on the boot partition.

John
 
A couple of things you can do from the command prompt:

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

E:\Documents and Settings\andy>cd \

E:\>attrib
A SH E:\hiberfil.sys
A SH E:\pagefile.sys

E:\>dir /ah
Volume in drive E is Windows 2000
Volume Serial Number is BC47-E093

Directory of E:\

04/02/2006 01:33p 1,073,197,056 hiberfil.sys
04/02/2006 01:33p 2,097,152 pagefile.sys
03/28/2005 12:07a <DIR> RECYCLER
03/27/2005 02:22p <DIR> System Volume Information
2 File(s) 1,075,294,208 bytes
2 Dir(s) 2,275,090,432 bytes free

E:\>
 
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