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partitions and logical drives

the_groundsman
Rising Star
Posts: 488
Thanks: 24
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎12-08-2007

partitions and logical drives

Hi
I have a bit of a blind spot with this so please be patient. On my hard drive I have a C:\drive of 85GB that when i manage storage shows its formatted as NTFS and is healthy and is described  (Boot, Page file, Crash Dump,Primary Partition). I also have a D:\ drive, also NTFS and healthy described as a logical drive.
Widows and progamme files are onthe C:\ and most of my files (mainly music and photos)  are on the D drive but ideally i would prefer to have the flexibility of managing this as a single drive so i make maximum use of the size available. The C drive is mostly empty but the D Drive is filling up fast. I tried to reduce the size of the C drive but once done I  couldnt make use of the extra head room by extending the D drive.
Is there a simple way of adjusting the size of the Cand D drives please?
7 REPLIES 7
ReedRichards
Seasoned Pro
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Registered: ‎14-07-2009

Re: partitions and logical drives

If you are running Windows Vista or later (7, 8 ) then you can resize partitions.  Right click Computer, select Manage then Disk Management.  You can shrink the C: partition but I don't think you can extend the 😧 partition backwards to fill the space generated.  So you would have to copy your files from the 😧  to C:, delete the 😧 partition, then create a new (D:) partition using all the available space.  Or forget the 😧 partition and expand the C: partition.   
MisterW
Superuser
Superuser
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: partitions and logical drives

Quote
but I don't think you can extend the 😧 partition backwards to fill the space generated.

You can do it with gparted by moving the D partition 'left' into the free space, created by reducing the size of the C partition, and then resizing the D partition to take account of the ( now ) free space to the right of it.
Moving a partition takes a LOT of time though if its got any significant amount of data in it and I'd advise taking some form of backup before attempting it, just in case!.
You can download a Live ( bootable ) CD from here http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php

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the_groundsman
Rising Star
Posts: 488
Thanks: 24
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Registered: ‎12-08-2007

Re: partitions and logical drives

Many thanks for the replies. It sounds like a lot of effort to me but i think I'll go for option of

doing a full back up of 😧
deleting 😧
expanding C:
copying back the data to the newly expanded C

That will still be damaging as I will lose things like my itues play counts etc as the music will all become refenced to a different place.
mikh43
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎26-06-2007

Re: partitions and logical drives

Plenty of commercial software out there that will do what you want. I have had consistently good experience with Acronis Disk Director Home (no commercial interest on my part!). Amongst other options it will allow you to merge your C: and 😧 drives into a single C: drive with no data loss. It will take some time (if there is a lot of data on D:. But you are right in that you will have to think about redirects to a named drive letter.
Forgive the extra comment - but do you really want to merge the drives? I find so many advantages in keeping data and the OS separate - e.g. if the OS gets messed up I can simply restore a recent clone of the C: drive bit-by-bit without touching my data on the 😧 drive.
Perhaps just shrink the C: drive leaving the unallocated space between C: and 😧 and then expand the 😧 drive backwards to use this unallocated space. Acronis will do this in a single multi-step operation.
Razer
Grafter
Posts: 1,398
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Registered: ‎17-11-2012

Re: partitions and logical drives

I can't think why anyone would want to store their personal data on their OS drive. I've always had the policy of storing my personal data and all backups on a completely separate drive(s) to my OS drive. With the OS drive being accessed all the time, it's all the more likely to fail sooner. With personal data on a separate drive(s) data loss is much less of a worry.
VileReynard
Hero
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Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: partitions and logical drives

Have a look at some of your registry entries.
Some will say C:/ ... and some will say D:/ ...
So deleting your D:/ drive will cause you grief - unless Acronis does registry updates too.
It was a bad move by Microsoft to have a dump of cryptic references all in one place.
Do you fancy doing a total reinstall of everything?

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journeys
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 3,829
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Registered: ‎24-09-2008

Re: partitions and logical drives

Quote from: Razer
I can't think why anyone would want to store their personal data on their OS drive.

Agreed, it easier to backup data if it's on a different disk. If backed up onto an external USB the Data is easy to use on another PC in case of system failure.