Weird Vista Partition

[stang]

Got a new Acer Laptop with Vista on it. Straight out of the box the 250 Gig hard drive is partitioned right in half.

C: drive (acer) is 111 gig
D: drive (Data) is 111 gig

Why?

Now the problem is the C: drive is nearly full yet the D drive is empty. But I cant store stuff practically on the D: drive cause when you go to my music, or my pictures it goes to the C: drive.

PLus I cant figure out how to make it just one big drive, any suggestions?

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by stang

Got a new Acer Laptop with Vista on it. Straight out of the box the 250 Gig hard drive is partitioned right in half.

C: drive (acer) is 111 gig
D: drive (Data) is 111 gig

Why?

Now the problem is the C: drive is nearly full yet the D drive is empty. But I cant store stuff practically on the D: drive cause when you go to my music, or my pictures it goes to the C: drive.

PLus I cant figure out how to make it just one big drive

Not the best idea in a laptop. Poor little 5400rpm hard drive. Spinning all the way to the 250th gig every time as opposed to bypassing half the drive first is a lot of extra wear and tear. I guess laptop HDs are cheap enough, but its a pain to have to reinstall everything.

Speaking of which, heres my usual plug for cheap computer work. PM me if needed.

[Bobblehead]

If the D: is truly empty you should be able to go into the Disk Management, remove that drive then expand the C: drive.

Here is a tutorial to get you started: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...torial133.html

And, as always, when you are playing with partitions, make sure you have any critical info backed up. If you make a mistake doing these operations the data is gone.

And my time to create this post is more expensive than Trad 0 I will only charge you a Golden Tee machine (which, if you think about it, only cost you $25, so it solves your problem for $25 - What a deal!)

[Boblobla]

What you need to do is stop installing things to 'Program Files' and create folders in your D: drive you games, apps, mass storage ect.

When you install something don't do the default install to C:\Program Files, click on Custom Install or something like that and install to a user created filepath, for example:

D:\Apps\Office
D:\Games\LeisureSuitLarry
D:\Downloads\pr0n\ATM\Sloppy

Edit: This is only something you can start doing now, I am not saying you can cut and paste currently existing files.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Boblobla

What you need to do is stop installing things to 'Program Files' and create folders in your D: drive you games, apps, mass storage ect.

When you install something don't do the default install to C:\Program Files, click on Custom Install or something like that and install to a user created filepath, for example:

D:\Apps\Office
D:\Games\LeisureSuitLarry
D:\Downloads\pr0n\ATM\Sloppy

Ummm, the concept is good, but the Windows registry screws it up. So do NOT do that.

Most apps that use an installer write to the registry and if you do a re-install of Windows it replaces the registry so those programs need to be re-installed anyways.

But I'm with you 100% as far as data goes - move your My Documents (it has a different name in Vista) folders to the D drive.

[mykalberta]

Partitions are used for backups incase you have to rebuild your OS, with external drives so cheap as well as thumb drives they are fricken useless. Get rid of it.

Some manufacturers hide 7ish gigs in a partition that is used so they dont have to give you a disk with the operating system on it in case reinstalls are required.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Some manufacturers hide 7ish gigs in a partition that is used so they dont have to give you a disk with the operating system on it in case reinstalls are required.

This pisses me off to no end! I have never, ever actually had one of these work properly. Give me the freakin' disc! How the hell is 'Average User' supposed to recover their computer if the hard drive itself craps out?

At least most come with a function to create a backup disc.

[Boblobla]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Ummm, the concept is good, but the Windows registry screws it up. So do NOT do that.

How so? I have been doing this for years instead of clogging my program files directory.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Boblobla

How so? I have been doing this for years instead of clogging my program files directory.

I think he means don't just go into C:\program files and move already installed programs onto your d drive.

Installing them straight away to the d drive like you suggested works just fine and won't mess with your registry.

[Boblobla]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

I think he means don't just go into C:\program files and move already installed programs onto your d drive.

Installing them straight away to the d drive like you suggested works just fine and won't mess with your registry.

Ah, I thought I had said that in my original post. I didn't mean copy and paste, I meant install.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

I think he means don't just go into C:\program files and move already installed programs onto your d drive.

Installing them straight away to the d drive like you suggested works just fine and won't mess with your registry.

Nope, I mean what I said.

When a windows installer runs, it more often than not will put keys in the registry, and when the program starts up or runs, it will reference those keys.

If you reinstall windows, those keys will no longer exist (it is a new hive).

Now not all programs put stuff in the registry, so for them an OS rebuild won't affect their operation. A few more will rebuild their keys if those keys are missing.

But to make a blanket statement saying to just install your programs in a different partition and an OS rebuild won't hurt them is wrong since there are MANY programs that will not work (especially the ones with DRM).

Feel free to do it, but don't be surprised if you are blindsided.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Nope, I mean what I said.

When a windows installer runs, it more often than not will put keys in the registry, and when the program starts up or runs, it will reference those keys.

If you reinstall windows, those keys will no longer exist (it is a new hive).

Now not all programs put stuff in the registry, so for them an OS rebuild won't affect their operation. A few more will rebuild their keys if those keys are missing.

But to make a blanket statement saying to just install your programs in a different partition and an OS rebuild won't hurt them is wrong since there are MANY programs that will not work (especially the ones with DRM).

Feel free to do it, but don't be surprised if you are blindsided.

So in the end... you do the OS rebuild and your registry is nuked. Your programs that can't/don't regenerate their keys and can't/don't operate without them will need to be reinstalled regardless if you kept them on the same partition or a different partition. You're stuck doing a reinstall of the application weather it was in C:\Program Files\ or D:\Games so your point is moot. However, depending on how your partitions are set up, putting stuff in D: may have been better use of your hard drive.


I was not trying to say that putting them on a different partition won't hurt them in case of an OS rebuild but they're hurt equally in terms of registry problems. Therefore, if there are other advantages to putting them onto a separate partition - go for it.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

So in the end... you do the OS rebuild and your registry is nuked. Your programs that can't/don't regenerate their keys and can't/don't operate without them will need to be reinstalled regardless if you kept them on the same partition or a different partition. You're stuck doing a reinstall of the application weather it was in C:\Program Files\ or D:\Games so your point is moot. However, depending on how your partitions are set up, putting stuff in D: may have been better use of your hard drive.


I was not trying to say that putting them on a different partition won't hurt them in case of an OS rebuild but they're hurt equally in terms of registry problems. Therefore, if there are other advantages to putting them onto a separate partition - go for it.

Just let it be one honkin' drive. You aren't limited to certain drive sizes anymore, and the old rumour of putting your swap partition on its own drive (let alone a separate partition on the same drive) was shown to have negligible difference (< 1% maybe). You can get some benefit if you make a system drive with one of the high speed drives (Velociraptor et al), but I'm not sure the price/noise/heat premium of those drives are worth it for the average user.

I do use a second drive to store media, download, documents, etc.

But for a laptop, I'm very surprised the drive was partitioned (other than the hidden recover partition). Make it one large drive and backup all your datafiles and anything you don't want to lose on an external USB Drive.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Just let it be one honkin' drive. You aren't limited to certain drive sizes anymore, and the old rumour of putting your swap partition on its own drive (let alone a separate partition on the same drive) was shown to have negligible difference (< 1% maybe). You can get some benefit if you make a system drive with one of the high speed drives (Velociraptor et al), but I'm not sure the price/noise/heat premium of those drives are worth it for the average user.

I do use a second drive to store media, download, documents, etc.

But for a laptop, I'm very surprised the drive was partitioned (other than the hidden recover partition). Make it one large drive and backup all your datafiles and anything you don't want to lose on an external USB Drive.

True enough on all points.

Unless their laptop came like that by default (or they were mucking around and did it by accident) and they've already started using both partitions... then it could get messy trying to get it back to a single large partition. In that case, go nuts and store whatever data and programs you want on the second one. As I think we've both beaten to death now, any benefits and drawbacks of partitioning your drive are going to be pretty negligible in a fairly standard setup.

[Bobblehead]

In stang's case he said D: is empty so he should be able to remove the partition then expand his C; to use up the free space.


We could debate the merits of the Black Viper site or Registry "cleaning" programs (both at best do little to nothing, at worst will hose your system).

[stang]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

In stang's case he said D: is empty so he should be able to remove the partition then expand his C; to use up the free space.

Yeah but I cant figure out how to do that even... :-(

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by stang

Yeah but I cant figure out how to do that even... :-(

Follow the instructions in http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...torial133.html to get to the Disk management applet.

Then on the D: drive you will want to delete the partition.

After that is successful, right click on the C: partition and Expand.

[sclitheroe]

Believe it or not, some manufacturers will partition up a drive like that because their standard image for pumping machines out the door, plus the product spec, is built around the C: partition size. I bet when this laptop was purchased, it was specced with a 120 gig hard drive, but they used what they had, which was obviously 250 or so.