C: and D: drive - sorry for numpty question but...

[Adam B]

I am not an IT bod so would appreciate your advuce.

I have a dell laptop with 320gb of storage split:

OS C: 138gb
DATAPART1 D: 149gb
RECOVERY E: 10gb

The C: drive is almost full and D: is empty.

So let the stupid quesions commence:

1. Why is half the storage space put on that D drive?
2. The C drive has my user directory sorted into music, photos etc. Can or should I move all the D storage to C or do I have to manually mirror the structure of C on to D and start saving new stuff to D? Surely this will cause problems for itunes if my music is split into 2 places?
3. This adds up to 297gb, wtf did the other 23gb I paid for go?
4. What does the E recovery drive do?

Thanks and sorry, I know this stuff is probably basic but none of my mates are in IT either so asking here

[Munter]

I believe you should be able to make iTunes look in 2 folders for your music. So you could start using a folder on D:\ (Say D:\Music), for that.

It might be easier to just move other things like your photos etc to the D:\ drive.

I suspect the reason it was done was so that the C:\ could have Windows installed in it, and the D:\ could be used for all your data (photos/music/video/documents etc). That way if Windows dies and needs reinstalling, there's no fear of wiping out your data, as that's in a another drive.

There are programs that will remove the D:\ and add the spare space to your C:\. But I've not done it for years so I'll let someone else recommend one.

Edit: E:\ drive contains the stuff required to reinstall the PC as "new". So if Windows does die, you can press a F* key on startup and have a working PC again. Hence the D:\ for your data.

Edited by Munter on Saturday 16th October 12:56

[randlemarcus]

Open the D: drive. Create a folder called My Documents

Right click My Documents. Select Properties. Change the path to D:\My DOcuments. Click Move. Go have cup of tea.

Et voila, lots more space on C

[Munter]

Never knew you could do that^^ How do programs that are looking for C:\Documents... cope with it?

[Adam B]

Munter said:

How do programs that are looking for C:\Documents... cope with it?

+1 just before I do that!

Edited by Adam B on Saturday 16th October 14:09

[randlemarcus]

Because they aren't looking for c:\documents etc, they are reading the operating system to ask it where it thinks "My Documents" is. All you are doing is telling the OS to file things in a different place, rather than on the C: drive.

Be aware that old, or badly written apps may continue to write to the absolute path on C:, but it wont be Word, IE or well written stuff.

[Adam B]

I am using XP and music/photo files are under c:\users\adam so not sure I have My Documents like I did in older Windows versions

do these instructions still follow or do I set up d:\users\adam ?

thanks

Edited by Adam B on Saturday 16th October 17:17

[P924]

Munter said:

Never knew you could do that^^ How do programs that are looking for C:\Documents... cope with it?

They don't look for c:\documents, they use enviroment variables, so would use %userprofile%

[Munter]

P924 said:

Munter said:

Never knew you could do that^^ How do programs that are looking for C:\Documents... cope with it?

They don't look for c:\documents, they use enviroment variables, so would use %userprofile%

I guess that'll depend on how they are written (as mentioned above).

Given the way iTunes and other such programs so neatly do things "the windows way" with everything else... I'd expect it (and a lot of other things) to look for C:\<path> and then wig out until the OP redirects them to their data. But then I'm a cynic...

[Adam B]

Adam B said:

I am using XP and music/photo files are under c:\users\adam so not sure I have My Documents like I did in older Windows versions

do these instructions still follow or do I set up d:\users\adam ?

thanks

can someone else this q please?

[randlemarcus]

Adam B said:

Adam B said:

I am using XP and music/photo files are under c:\users\adam so not sure I have My Documents like I did in older Windows versions

do these instructions still follow or do I set up d:\users\adam ?

thanks

can someone else this q please?

Sorry, missed this. Do the My Documents thing, then you, as a fallible human are more likely to remember that's where your important stuff is, rather than in a nondescript users directory. Dont forget to ensure the backup size still looks right.

[ATM]

Adam B said:

Adam B said:

I am using XP and music/photo files are under c:\users\adam so not sure I have My Documents like I did in older Windows versions

do these instructions still follow or do I set up d:\users\adam ?

thanks

can someone else this q please?

XP should work the same way. So if you follow the instructions set out above it should work fine for you too. I would double check for you but I am using a MAC right now.

[Adam B]

randlemarcus said:

Right click My Documents. Select Properties. Change the path to D:\My DOcuments. Click Move. Go have cup of tea.

Either i am being dense (quite possible) or these instructions don't make sense in XP

I have created D:\my documents

what folder do what you want me to select and then right click? C:\Users\Adam ? Because it does not let me change the path (the selection box is greyed out and just says Adam, I get a menu box with 4 tabs - general/sharing/security/customise

help!!

[XDA]

Adam B said:

randlemarcus said:

Right click My Documents. Select Properties. Change the path to D:\My DOcuments. Click Move. Go have cup of tea.

Either i am being dense (quite possible) or these instructions don't make sense in XP

I have created D:\my documents

what folder do what you want me to select and then right click? C:\Users\Adam ? Because it does not let me change the path (the selection box is greyed out and just says Adam, I get a menu box with 4 tabs - general/sharing/security/customise

help!!

Right click the "My Documents" folder on your desktop or in the start menu. Then select "properties" and change the path to D:/My Documents.

[Adam B]

XDA said:

Right click the "My Documents" folder on your desktop or in the start menu. Then select "properties" and change the path to D:/My Documents.

there is no "my documents" in the start menu - there is:

Adam (the parent directory for the 4 below plus a few others)
Documents (this just contains a few word and excel files)
Pictures
Music
Games

then

computer
network
control panel etc

[randlemarcus]

Try right clicking Adam then

[james_gt3rs]

Adam B said:

3. This adds up to 297gb, wtf did the other 23gb I paid for go?

What's advertised as 320 gigabytes is actually 320,000,000,000 bytes, which works out as about 297GB.

A kilobyte is 1024 bytes, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes and so on.

But to make it simpler, people consider a kilobyte to be 1000 bytes and so on. This causes a small inaccuracy which gets worse as the numbers get bigger.

HTH.

[Dogwatch]

Just my tuppence worth. It can be disorienting at times if you have the same names such as 'Documents', 'Pictures' etc. in both drives. I use names such as 'DocumentsD', 'MusicD' so I know which drive I'm in if I have a lot of windows open. I also have shortcuts to the main D drive items so that I don't have to go via My Computer each time.

I was always taught at work that it was good practice to keep programs on the C drive and data on the D drive.

And back-up your data!! What may look like a large and unnecessary capital expense suddenly looks very cheap when your hard drive fails.

[Adam B]

randlemarcus said:

Try right clicking Adam then

whereupon I do not get a "Properties" option

next?

[Vespula]

1.Open Windows Explorer, navigate to the empty drive that you want to use to store data, and create new folders for each of the existing folders you want to move. If you’re the only user on your computer, you can put them in the root of the drive: D:\Documents, D:\Music, and so on. If you’re planning to use the drive to store data for two or more users, you should create a separate top-level folder for each user and then create subfolders for each type of data: D:\Adam\Documents, etc.

2.Click Start and click the bold user name at the top of the right column in the Start menu. This opens your profile folder.

3.Right-click the icon for the Documents folder and choose Properties.

4.On the Location tab, click the Move button.

5.In the Select a Destination dialog box, double-click Computer, double-click the icon for your data drive (D: in this example), and select the folder you want to use as the new location. Don’t double-click this folder, just click to select it.

6.Click Select Folder to return to the Location tab, and then click OK. You will see two dialog boxes:
Do you still want to proceed and redirect to <new folder location>? Click Yes.
Would you like to move all of the files in your old location to the new location…? Click Yes. (If you click No, the original folder remains intact and you risk having documents split between the two locations.)

That’s it. You can now repeat the process for Music, Pictures, Videos, and any other data folders you want to use. When you click the Documents shortcut on the Start menu, it takes you to the new location, which appears to be in the same old location. In the Vista namespace, your profile folder always appears under the Desktop, and each link in that folder points to the location you specify. So you can leave some folders (especially those you rarely use) in the original location and just move those that are chock full of data.

Edited by Vespula on Wednesday 20th October 07:41