Resizing Harddrive Sectors...

OK, I have a Systemax with an XP OS and a Samsung SPO411N 40GB Harddrive, that is sectioned from the factory into two separate drives, C and D. The C drive is the main NTSF drive and the D is the FAT32 BAckup drive for the factory restore function.

C is Bootable, D is not. The C drive is 27.27 GB of space, and the D is 10GB of space. Other than 39 MB of unallowcated drive I don't know where the other space of the 40 total is hiding. The Problem is, my system is borderline for speed efficiency with 20 gigs of Free space and I don't have but 20.4 left to play with.

To keep my system operating as fast as possible as is, I need to keep that 20 gigs free, right? So, scince my D drive is only taking up 2.43 gigs of space and the other 7.56 GB of space is useless, I want to resize the D drive and enlarge the C drive by 5GB from the D. Does anyone know a way to reallowcate some of the section of D to some of the C? Can it be done without reformatting the harddrive or does it need a complete rewrite?

 

Try partition magic?

 

Don't you have the option to burn the recovery partition to discs? Save the partition to disc and you could reformat the D: partition and use it as storage.

 

Is Partition Magic freeware that I can get here? and I am not sure how to do a reformat, and if I did I am sure that wouldn't know how to resize the partitions while I was, so what do I do?

Actually I am not even sure how to burn the discs yet, I just installed the CD burner given to me by a friend, a Yamaha, which I am sure you know is no longer supported by Yamaha, so it runs on Windows XP drivers. I installed it specifically to do backup discs for the system. The original Nero programs were not XP compatible so I just dumped them when they started causing problems.

My problem there is how do you break your info up to download a completely funtional OS, Or do I just backup all my personal files and leave the OS and software downloads to the original installation software?

I thought that I might be able to create a disc version of the OS by doing A kind of series of patches or some such, but I am pretty ignorant in this regard.

Thanks for what you can tell Me.

 

Seems a bit fiddly to repartition.

20Gb free is a lot. If it's defragged it should run fast with half that free. Have you got enough RAM installed? If you're doing lots of calls to/from your HDD that would make things slow down. 2nd idea (if you need more space) is just buy a 2nd HDD as they're pretty cheap - stick all but a few Mb of your pagefile on it and specify the same upper and lower size so it doesn't fragment over time.

P

 

Well, Fiddly? as in to fiddle with something to make it different? Or would that be make it better. I have more than 10GB of space on a harddrive that I can never use that is taken up by less than 2 and a half GB of information, and it makes sense to leave it that way for the life of the system?

I am not trying to be rude here, but practicality says 10 for 2 is overkill and should be reduced to maximize the system operation. At least five gigs can be moved and put to good use, so, to be sensable, Why let it go to waste where it does you no good.

By the way, I believe it was XP for Dummies that say's that XP driven systems should have 20 gigs of free space for optimum operation speed. Yes I need to upgrade my RAM From the 256MB that I have to some thing more suitable like the up to 4 gigs potential I could have, and yes I intend to upgrade to a second harddrive eventually, but does that mean I should leave inefficiency where it is when I find it? I could use the extra five gigs, so why leave it where it does me no good?
Thanx

 

I have used Partion Magic plenty of times and it will do what you want no problem. Just make sure you make a restore point right before you do it and label it just to be safe, and as far as memory unless you play alot of games or do video editing you should be good with 512mb or even 768mb of memory.

 

You can buy it online or at a retail store

 

Yeah, Griff, (I can call you that, right?)That is what I intend to do. I've been looking at adding another 512 KB of RAM, but I am kind of new to this. I have spent some time reading this website and have learned a lot, but, I still have questions. The one I have had the hardest time getting answers to was, How do I know which Type of RAM I need? Pin numbers is a big blank, and my current RAM may not be easily matched which means I may have to replace it anyway. I can't find anything written on how you know what you have and what you need. A scan did show I had four slots for RAM sticks so I seem to be fairly unlimited on how much I can install, now and later. But that is for another thread.

So, basically you are telling me that there is a price tag for resizing these partitions to use your harddrive rescources efficiently,Huh? That sucks. Too bad they didn't make it easier. I will see if my brother-in-law geek knows somebody who knows somebody who already has it, and if not I will have to see how high the pricetag is and how I can redistibute the cost over time or get him to split the cost. He works on computers so he might have more use for it than I do.

Do you by any chance know if this partition is standard XP or is it something Systemax did on their own? I sure don't see why an engineer of a system would see 25% of a harddrive for a double redundant system as being effective management of rescources. By double redundant I mean, you have backup disks if you need them, so while the restore is convenient is it 25% of rescources convenient enough? That is a lot of space to dedicate to something you might need once or twice in the entire life of the system. Especially if less than 25% of that 25% is actually being utilized.

I don't suppose you could tell me where the missing gigs of harddrive are? Out of 40 I show less than 37 and a half total? Does the BIOS take up that much or something? I assume that the unallowcated space is the initial bootup and formatting information that the factory uses when doing the assembly?

Thanks for being here, I learn a lot from this place, and I am sorry I didn't tune in before I bought this system. Might have saved me a lot of grief.

 

"Missing gigs" is system overhead on formatting. Manufacturers quote unformatted capacity as it's larger, rather than usable, typically 10% less. Perhaps be happy that you don't have a bigger drive - my 300Gb Maxtors format down to 276Gb usable.

BTW, what do you use your system for? You say it's slow, but it's not clear what is slow - disk access, processing, games? For most uses more RAM has a better delta on performance than a few Gb of hard disk space. IMO, of course.

Paul

 

Yeah that is cool. If You Download a program called cpuz and click yhe tab that says SPD It will tell you all the info about your memory you need

 

|MG| Free Download - CPU-Z 1.28.6

 

O K , Got the download and will run it later and get back to this tomarrow. As for the use I put this machine to, I mostly use it to contact retailers for parts and to keep in touch with people. Games are really not my forte, but I may use it later for some animation stuff. That stuff sort of facinates me. And before you tell me, I read that Intel Celeron is not the best choice for that stuff.

The speed of my system is not that bad right now, but, if my downloads get too far into the free space, I really begin to see the slowdown. However, that is not the worst as far as speed is concerned, I am also limited to a hardwire dialup modem, because I am a ruralite. The only option is Dish Network, which I cannot afford the pricetag for.

I may eventually use computer for commercial purposes but, will probably have to use a remote on a server network for any advertising. I think Google and Yahoo both have remote website programs, but, being a country bumpkin still has some tradeoffs.

I am totally amazed that it would take that much memory to just format the harddrive. That seems alot. Since I got this system I have been fighting a problem with repeated crashes, (20 scince February 17th) and am looking for a way to find out the reason. Microsoft blames it on everything but their software, and Systemax thinks that support is "sure mail it too us and sit on your hands for the next month and if we can't find the problem we'll send it back evenually as it was."

Needless to say I regret that I spent the money I had with Systemax, and if I had it to do over again I would build my own. Even though I never really played with this stuff till I got this one.

Anyway, I'll be doing another thread on that here pretty soon, would tonight but I am tired, so will do it later. Thanks for the info. SEE YA.

 

Talked to the sister, and the brother-in- law seems interested in splitting the cost of an XP version of Partition Magic, if the feedback he gets is positive from the Geek websites. Seems that the company that owned the rights to it sold to someone else and he is uncertain if the earlier quality has been maintained. Had an earlier version, and liked it.

We went over the RAM earlier, and there was one piece of information that I never got a clear answer to. The question deals with number of Pins. I see 184, and 240(?). I've seem no way to tell what you have and have no idea if they even are important. I am guessing that 184 is the most common, because that is what I see in the stores mostly. Still doesn't tell me what I should buy for my machine. My RAM is Nanya, I can't tell you the number right now because I just did a factory restore and haven't loaded my programs back on yet. I was here downloading my Antivirus and was looking for something to do until it was done. Had to come online with no AV because I forgot to load it on my B/U Disc.

I think it's going to be hard to match, so may have to keep it as a backup and get two new ones(the RAM). I will post the number as soon as my system is back to it's peak performance level(not hard to reach at this point). I couldn't find it on the Nanya website. Maybe someone else can tell me how meny pins it has.