[TRUEfrancesca]

When I bought my laptop, it's 160GB HDD came separated in two partitions (is that the correct terminology?) = C: drive and D: drive.

I left it that way, and so far have only used C: because 1) I have no experience in using more than one drive, 2) that's where most programs download to anyway, 4) it contains the My Documents folder where I organise all my personal files into My Pictures, My Music, My Videos, etc. folders., and 4) I had not yet run out of space.
However, 4) no longer applies because a year's worth of music and video files has filled up my C: drive, despite the fact that I've deleted what I can and bought an external HDD on which to archive and back things up on.

I've read up on partitions a little and believe that that's how my laptop's memory is organised. Assuming that it is, ...

• how can I optimise my use of these two (C: and D:) drives?
• which files are best (or at least safe) to move from my C: to my D: drive?
• how do I go about moving them?
• will everything continue running smoothly after I move these files? or do I need to point programs, applications, etc. to the new location of the files.

Thanks in advance to anyone who's read this ^ and posted that v .

[Hybr!d]

Download CCleaner from out downloads section.

It will remove old junk and temporary files without accidentally removing anything important.

Just run it on default settings.

[philthomas]

• how can I optimise my use of these two (C: and D:) drives?

There is nothing really to optomise ... if Drive D: is empty, it's ready for use.

• which files are best (or at least safe) to move from my C: to my D: drive?

You can move any files to Drive D:, but obviously you cannot move any installed Programs or Windows files.

• how do I go about moving them?

Copy & Paste, Drag and Drop or Cut & Paste .... the first 2 will copy the files, the latter will move them. Another way to move them is Right Click and Drag & Drop

• will everything continue running smoothly after I move these files? or do I need to point programs, applications, etc. to the new location of the files.

If you want your programs to save files to the D: drive, you will need to navigate to the drive/folder you wish. Some programs will remember the last Save location, but some will not, so you will be better using the Save As option, until you become familiar.
Otherwise everything will be the same.

HTH

[MJM]

What I personally like to do is move My Documents to a sub folder on D:\.
Open up My Computer. Now tell me the size of the drives. It may be wise to only move limited amounts to D:\. Reading that it's 160GB however makes me feel a bit more secure about it. I've seen stupidly formatted laptops (same size partitions, d smaller than c, three partitions with one being tiny, etc)
Either way, if D:\ is large enough, I would just open it up in My Computer and create a folder callled "Documents", "My Documents", or whatever.
Then on the desktop icon for My Documents you can right click and select Properties and the upmost tab will display the target destination. Hit move and select D:\ then the folder of choice.
It should copy your files over, if not then go to C:\Documents and Settings\*USERNAME* and copy the documents out of the (my )documents folder.

[dr john]

These three are likely to be the folders with the biggest files in them - My Pictures, My Music, My Videos, etc Moving just them is likely to have a big impact on your free space on c:\ Then you just continue to store music, images and vidoes on the d:\ drive from now on.
CCleaner will also help free up wasted space as suggested above.

[TRUEfrancesca]

Thanks to all for your suggestions! Am very grateful!

@MJM

Originally Posted by MJM

Open up My Computer. Now tell me the size of the drives.
It may be wise to only move limited amounts to D:. Reading that it's 160GB however makes me feel a bit more secure about it. I've seen stupidly formatted laptops (same size partitions, d smaller than c, three partitions with one being tiny, etc)

C: is currently occupying 65.3GB out of its 71.9GB of storage. Meanwhile D: has 71.6GB out of 72GB available (free). Hmmm ... my D: drive is completely emtpy though. No hidden files, temps, NOTHING. So where did my 408MB go? ...

Well, even without those missing 408MB, do you thing the D: is big enough to carry out the rest of your suggestions successfully?

Also, I just noticed that the C: runs on FAT32 while the D: runs on NTFS.
Why is this? And does it affect what I intend to do to either of them?

[Hybr!d]

It's not missing, drives are always a bit smaller than their advertised size.

Just run the cleaner on C:\ you'll be surprised how much space it recovers.

Then, in the future when you install a new game or bit of software put it on D:\, no need to transfer anything.

[philthomas]

Originally Posted by TRUEfrancesca

Also, I just noticed that the C: runs on FAT32 while the D: runs on NTFS.
Why is this? And does it affect what I intend to do to either of them?

It just means, when it was formatted, by the maker, one drive was formatted in FAT32 and the other in NTFS.

Not really sure why manufacturers do this, as NTFS is far more robust.

It should'nt affect you, but it might be a good idea to convert your C: drive to NTFS, which as mentioned, is more robust.


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb456984.aspx

[MJM]

Usually some space is always used for system related files, the MBR and such.

Either way you can safely transfer the My Documents folder as I described to D:\
If however the cleaner clears enough space I wouldn't worry about it.

I like running FAT32 for my Win drive since Linux has no severe issues accessing that, but NTFS support is still shady.

[Baxter]

@ MJM,
do you have problems accessing ntfs through linux.