Disk Partition Issue?

Here's the situation:

I have 2 hard disks: a 75 GB disk and a 150 GB disk.

The 75 GB disk is partioned into two virtual drives:
(C) 10 GB and (D) 65 GB

All of my operating system and program drives on located on drive (C). This drive is filled to capacity with only about 500 MB left. Drive (D) is almost completely empty as is my 150 GB drive.

I have tried loading program files to drive (D) but many of these programs seem to require being loaded to a drive designated as the (C) drive.

QUESTION: What's the best way for me to open up space so that I can load more program files?

 

plodr

I think you're right: I shouldn't have used the term "virtual" drive. There is nothing on drive D. Drive C has all of the programs. Both C and D drives reside on a single hard disk. There are no other drives on this disk.

 

Could you help me figure this out (please)? I don’t want to make any mistakes with that might put my system out of commission. Let me rephrase my issue. The solution may have nothing to do with the partioned disk.


I have 2 hard disks: a 75 GB disk and a 150 GB disk.

The 75 GB disk is partitioned into two drives labeled C and D. The 150 GB disk is labeled E.

My C drive, where all of my operating system and program drives are located, is totally full. As a result, I would like to transfer everything over to the E drive and rename it as the new C drive.

Do you have any suggestions about how I should best address this? I’ve been told that I’m intelligent…….but I’m finding that I’m more of an idiot savant when it comes to not understanding operating system drives.

 

Dear PLODR:

I wanted to thank you for the advice. I FINALLY downloaded True Image and ran it. I was able to get my operating system transferred from the small disk to the larger disk.

I now have another issue, however, that I'm hoping you'll have some thoughts about. I transferred everything to a larger drive. Now, whenever I reboot, I get a message that a "nonsystem disk" is being used. I read a few things about possibly needing to change the jumpers on the drives so that the master/slave relationship refers to the new disk as the master disk. I don't know how to go about doing this and I don't see anything in the Acronis documentation that explains this either.

Do you have any instructions for getting the system to boot from where the operating system exists? I'm not mechanically adept so I'm hoping that this will be fairly simple. Thanks again for your insight!!

 

To be honest, I didn't read all the other posts thoroughly, but here's my 2 cents: I'm assuming the 75gb drive is drive C: and drive D:. C: is almost full. If D: is empty (or has little data on it that would be easy to move or can be erased), then you can simply stretch C: to use the entire drive, or a portion thereof. Popular belief says that this is impossible, or at least very difficult. Neither is true. Download BootIT and create a boot floppy or CD. Boot to it and do NOT select the 'install now' mode; you want maintenance mode. You'll go into the 'partition work' mode and select 'Resize'. It will ask what size you want, and it will do all the work. It can take some time, so be patient. I have used BootIT MANY times to stretch a partition and never had any problems or data loss, but it is possible, so consider yourself warned. You can download BootIT from here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download646.html
This is a new version that was released yesterday and I haven't used it. It says shareware as did the older version I've used, but I think using maintenance mode from the boot disk is free. I believe you must pay to use the boot management tools and to install the software on the hard drive. All I know is I first downloaded BootIT about 2 years ago, and I'm using the same boot floppy that I first created. It works great and has never prompted me to pay or given me any time limits, but I have also never installed it (maintenance mode only).

 

Thanks a bunch for your help. With your help I was able to get the drives moved and partitioned correctly. The software you recommended worked great.

I did discover that I didn't need to change the jumpers on any of my hard drives. After running the Acronis software I restarted the computer a few times and was able to get a BIOS screen to appear. This let me change the master/slave designations for each of the drives.

Thanks again for your help with this issue.