no space left

Hi I have only about 800mb of disc space left on 1 of the partitions (c) how do I merge the 2 (c&d) partitions together or just extend (c) into (d) there is about 10gb left on (d) only 40gb drive on laptop .I've cleaned as much as I can off the drive but a Win update or anivirus update takes up space on the (c) drive

 

Is it just one hard drive installed on the laptop. You need to go to Disc management.

What OS are you running on the laptop?

Win 7 - go to start and type in the box disc management and you can change the size of partitions on there.

I am not too sure about windows XP as I havn't been using that OS for years now.

 

If you are on Windows Xp.

Go to Start.

Then Settings.

Then Control Panel.

In Control panel Click on Performance and Maintenance.

Then in P&M at the Bottom Click on Administrative Tools.

Then in AT click on Computer management.

Then in Computer management on the left side of window click on Disk management.

Right-click the partition, logical drive, or volume you want to delete, and then click Delete Partition.

 

Have you moved your personal folders, My Docs, Pics, Music etc to D? If not then that's the first thing to do. You can do this via the Move button on the Properties of the top folder.

Other than that then you need to get a view of just what is using up your space, and for this you could try something like WinDirStat which shows your folders in size order and allows you to manage them.

 

Surely if I move My Doc My Music My Pictures onto the d part of the partition then delete that partition I would loose them I think the op system is on C drive
Win XP laptop 40GB hard drive

 

I'm not recommending you delete the D partition - it's the proper way to organise your computer, OS and software on C, data on D, which greatly simplifies both system and data backup. You gain no additional space by deleting D, you just make the system more cumbersome to manage. Windows is quite happy for you to move these special folders, the "My" folders, to another partition.

Do have a look at the software I recommended too - that's a real boon when you need to free up space. 40GB though is tiny by today's standards so a larger disk is the real answer.

 

A few other basic steps that you may already have taken -

- Delete all the $NtUninstall files in C:\Windows. These files enable you to uninstall individual updates and it's safe to remove them if you feel your system is stable

- Use the Disk Cleanup button in the Properties of C:

- Tick the Compress drive option in the Properties of C:

and after all that run CCleaner to catch any leftovers

 

Haven't used this yet, but I believe this is the best way to handle that.

Removes Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs Registry entries

The author of the above is also involved in this discussion.
Remove HOTFIX Backups?