Disk Partitioning

I am helping a person with their disk partitions. It is a4 year old Acer laptop with XP3. The hard drive was originally partitioned into 2 -26 gig partitions, why I don't know. Partition C is almost full, D has less than a gig on it.

Using some free partition program I got here, (I can't remember which one right now), I was able to reduce the D partition down to 5 gig, so now it says unallocated hard drive space of ~20 gig. I didn't take the next step however and increase the C partition by thee same amount because I wanted to first inquire here as to the possibility of this increase causing a loss of data/programs.

Is this safe to do? I know everything should and will be backed up somewhere but what are my chances of losing some or all? Does the fact that I am expanding the partition make this operation safe? Cause I certainly could understand that if you reduce the partition below the amount be used you would encounter problems.

Thank you, this place is great!

 

The original 50/50 partitioning was good, and if I were you the first thing I would do is restore to how it was. The idea of that is that you keep OS and programs on one partition, and all your own stuff - My Documents etc - on the other. This makes backup operations very simple, and greatly reduces the risk of data loss if there is a problem with the OS.

Should you follow this advice, the second step is to move My Documents, the email store, and any other personal stuff to D. This will free up space on C without any of the risks associated with repartitioning a drive with a load of stuff on it.

Post back if you want advice on how you move My Docs etc in Windows so Windows knows where it is.

 

Earthling,

Thank you for your advice. Yes, I would like to know how this is done safely. So the OS is on C and user generated data and files is on D? And then programs like MS Office will seek and save on D? I don't know how to do that.

 

Let's start with My Documents. If you right click My Docs and click Properties there is a Move button. Use that to move it to D: or whatever drive letter the second partition has.

Well-written programs should automatically detect this change and start saving and opening from the new location. However this does need to be checked, and you would do this in Word 2007 for example by checking the Save location in Word Options. You should do this for all programs with which you create documents. Bit of a fag, but only has to be done once, and is a whole lot less trouble than partitioning going wrong on you. Some programs may not detect the change and you will have to set the Save location via the menu system.