Need remedy for disk-hungry OS

  • Thread starter Thread starter mdh
  • Start date Start date
M

mdh

I have a laptop with a single physical hard drive, broken
into C: (4 GB/1.1 free) and D: (13 GB, 12.5 free). The
machine was originally built with Win2KPro, but a bad SP4
installation took care of that. I upgraded to XPPro and
am generally satisfied, except for the extra disk space
that XPPro requires. I have been installing programs
into "D:\Program Files" as much as possible to conserve
disk space on C:, but I think I'm just delaying the
inevitable. Both logical drives are Basic NTFS
partitions. What I would like to do is to merge D: into
C: but not lose anything stored on either drive. There
is still enough room on C: to move everything from D:
onto it in order to make a change, but there's a lot of
registry entries pointing to D:.

Could anyone offer some good advice, and possibly any
hints on registry editing that could automate (fully or
partially) any references to D: to expedite a change.
Thanks!
 
Instead of manually moving files and playing with the
registry, you look into a third party partition manager to
move some of the space on D:\ into C:\. I have done this
sort of thing with Partition Magic version 8, under XP
(home). My disks were FAT32, but it is supposed to handle
NTFS. Note that unlike FDISK, Partition Magic does not
erase data. Rather, it carefully moves it and adjusts the
directories (FAT or NTFS) to point to the right location.

Alternatives include Acronis Partition Expert, Paragon
Partition Manager, etc. Do a web seach on "partition
manager" or "partition resize" for more possibilities.
 
Thanks, Bob! I will look into those products. I have
been reading about basic and dynamic volumes on the XP
Help System, but it seems to go around in circles while
carefully avoiding coming to the point. Some more
studying on partition managers sounds like the best way to
go. Thanks again!
 
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