Partition Troubles

[Skarlath]

To put it nice and briefly - my hard drive is partitioned into C: and D:. C is where the operating system and some essential programs are installed, D is where everything else is. However! C was made a little too small - there is only around 250mb left on it, which fluctuates of course according to any temporary files and such. Because this is so small I continously get little system popups warning me to free more space. Meanwhile D drive had another 30gb free, and plenty more once I get around to tidying it up a little.

So. Is it possible to tweak the partitions to give the C drive partition an extra gb or two from D drives spare space, without risking any problems of damage to data on either drive?

How would I go about doing it?

Thanks :)

[Nubb]

You'd have to reinstall (re-partition/re-format/reinstall). I don't know of any apps that can alter a partition once it's been formatted.

Quick fix, possibly, to free up some hard disk space. If you have Hibernation on, turn it off!
Start > Settings > Control Panel > Power Options > click on the Hibernate tab > uncheck Enable hibernation.

Now, look at your C:'s root directory, you'll most likely find a HUGE file named "hiberfil.sys" (assuming you've hibernated at some point in time). The file can be at least as large as however much memory you have (hibernating, amoungst other things, writes all of your memory (however much is in use anyway) to disk).

So, delete that freaking beast of a file: hiberfil.sys


You could also try moving the page file (virtual memory) to another drive (D:), but you might have problems with some apps that can't find it once it's moved.

If it's as bad as it sounds though, I'd start preparing for a re-install (repartition/format). You can't outrun winBloat forever.

Thanks,
Nubb

Edit The hiberfil.sys file might be hidden, I dunno cuz I don't have one so I can't check. So if you don't see it, make sure you can see hidden and system files. It is NOT the huge pagefile.sys file, don't delete that one.

[Fozzik]

I thought there were some applications that would let you fiddle around with partitions on a formatted/in use drive. Partition Magic seems to be a name in the back of my head, although I have no idea what that one does.

To bad it isn't Linux... hehe. Nubb may be completely right, it may be time to repartition and reformat. I've never really seen much benefit (at least on newer operating systems) from keeping a separate system partition, but I guess opinions vary on that.

[Nubb]

You're correct Fozzik, here's a quote from the features info on it:
Allows you to copy, move, resize, split, or merge partitions as needed without losing data

And a link:
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/system_performance/pm80/

I certainly didn't know this was possible. Heck might even be some freeware partition apps available, although I'd back up everything just in case!

btw I hate symantec, just had to say that.

[Fozzik]

Symantec is one of the best business-class firewalls you can get, I loved working with it and had an easy time. Sadly, the Norton anti-virus that you get for home is quite a bit different than the corporate edition. Sad... NAV has a much bigger memory footprint, isn't nearly as intuitive or easy to use, etc. Oh well, it's still kept up to date well and is a big name which you can reasonably rely on to work. I've had good success with NAV on my own computer, it passes all the testing I've done on it (which is more than I can say for many other AV packages), and I've never had conflict or performance issues with it (I scan in the middle of the night when I'm not using the computer, and have always had plenty of power to make up for the rather cumbersome background services).

At any rate, Partition Magic was just one I remembered seeing. I'll bet you there are many others. Maybe even some that are cheaper than $70. :confused:

[Skarlath]

Thanks guys

Nubb - I've never used hybernation, so deleting the hibernation file isn't going to do anything for me.

I wondered about moving the page file from C to D - Is this possible, and are there any consequences? Im guessing since it is a partitioned drive it wouldn't actually make any real difference, so this could be a good option.

I think partition magic was what was used to create the partition in the first place, so i'll search around for it. I guess i'll make sure that everything is backed up - even if they claim you can alter the partition without effecting the files I wouldn't want to risk it. :)

[Lord_Vyper]

By all means, move the page file to drive D. Won't hurt anything to do it.

And partition magic can do just about anything you want to attempt with partitioning, but be sure to backup anything important, just in case.

[Breogan]

If the partition is in the same disk, moving the swap file there won't make any difference. The improvements come when you have a dedicated FAT32 partition in a secondary drive.

[Nubb]

If the partition is in the same disk, moving the swap file there won't make any difference. The improvements come when you have a dedicated FAT32 partition in a secondary drive.
You won't improve performance, it's the same drive (speed), but he would free up a lot of disk space on this C: partition, which is what he needs. So it would make a differnce. :)

Thanks guys

Nubb - I've never used hybernation, so deleting the hibernation file isn't going to do anything for me.

Keep in mind that Hibernation is on by default. Even if you haven't "used" it, if you never disabled it (nor looked for and removed the hiberfil.sys file), then it's running and (probably) wasting disk space. Just one of the many services Microsoft thinks you want. :p


Here's some quick tips on page file monkey'n, taken from:
http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm
(more detail, of course, if you just hit the link above)
I found the part I put in bold interesting, I wasn't aware of this in particular, and is probably the grounds for my previous statement that some apps might not see the page file -- because, apparently if you move it it just might not exist (or be ignored). Interesting.

Move the pagefile off the disk that holds your system and boot partitions to another fast and dedicated hard disk. If you do put the file elsewhere, you should leave a small amount on C: - an initial size of 2MB with a Maximum of 50 is suitable - so it can be used in emergency. Without this, the system is inclined to ignore the settings and either have no page file at all (and complain) or make a very large one indeed on the C: drive.

Format the partition where the page file is placed with NTFS and a 4kb cluster size (which is in fact the default setting for an NTFS partition).

Have the initial size be at least 1.5 times bigger than the amount of physical RAM. Do NOT make the pagefile smaller than the amount of physical RAM you've got installed on your system.

Make its initial size as big as the maximum size.

Do not place multiple paging files on different partitions on the same physical disk drive.

If you have a RAID-0 (Stripe Set) array, use it to store the pagefile.

Avoid putting a paging file on a fault-tolerant drive, such as a mirrored volume (RAID-1) or a RAID-5 volume. Paging files do not need fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant systems suffer from slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.

If you use Windows XP and Fast User Switching, there are special considerations: When a user is not active, there will need to be space available in the page file to ‘roll out’ his or her work: therefore, the page file will need to be larger. Only experiment in a real situation will establish how big, but a start point might be an initial size equal to half the size of RAM for each user logged in.

Thanks,
Nubb

[Breogan]

You won't improve performance, it's the same drive (speed), but he would free up a lot of disk space on this C: partition, which is what he needs. So it would make a differnce. :)
You're right, I misunderstood what he was talking about, thinking he meant to do it once he repartitioned.

Two more tips to recover some space:
Disable "System Restore" in your System properties.
Reduce the size of the Recycle Bin: By default the Recycle Bin reserves 10% of the drive size, which can be quite a chunk sometimes and totally unneeded. To change this setting right-click on the Recycle Bin in your desktop and set the size for each of your partitions as needed (I have it at 1-2% so it ends being about 1Gb for each partition).

[Kullall]

Partition Magic should solve your woes. I used a version of it almost two years ago and remember it being VERY user friendly and VERY powerful. Otherwise, just reformat and reinstall.

[Fozzik]

Something appears to be wrong with this thread... testing, testing. Ah, the second page wasn't working, clicking the link was taking me to the top of the first page of the thread. This post seems to have straightened it out.

[tennex]

I'll piggyback on the partition magic hype. I used it a lot when I was a network administrator for 3+ years. Never once did it cause me to loose all or any data, although I always did a backup of anything important because the nature of the program warrants you to do so.

If you are using Symantec v8 or older it may be leaving your old virus definitions in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\Virusdefs. Inside there are folders named by dates of the virus databases. Feel free to delete the old folders. It stopped doing this once I upgraded to version 10 after a reformat. So I am not totally sure if it was the old version or not.

Moving the pagefile can cause problems. I have done this myself, and I would strongly recommend reading a guide kind like the instructions posted to educate yourself on preventative measures to keep anything crazy from happening. There is no penalties of having multiple page files (on different partitions of course) so greatly reducing the C:\'s pagefile size without getting rid of it's entirety is definitely the way to go.

My next recommendation is to uninstall programs that are rather large in size and reinstall them to the other partition. Like microsoft office. Hunting for any others goes hand in hand with my next idea, but more than likely easy enough to just review your add/remove programs to refresh your memory on what all you have installed.

This one is a no-brainer. You can start doing a properties of each folder one by one in the subdirectories of your C:\ directory parent folders. Note: Selecting a folder will not give you a complete number of how much space that it and all of it's subdirectories are occupying. So you must do a properties if your going to go on a hunt.

This has been suggested to me before by someone that a good diskkeeper program can eliminate fragments better than the windows defragmenter can. Not sure on this, never tried it. I hope this helps good luck.