Need help on HD Partitioning?

[Crewman47]

I've been using the Disk Management program on Windows 7's Computer Management tools and this is how my Hard Drive looks like just after I took 100GB from the D: Drive.

I now want to put this 100GB onto the C: Drive but I can't remember how to do that as when I delete the new drive, leaving unallocated space, I can only extend the D: drive to this 100GB. Because I've got a bit of stuff on the D drive I'm a bit hesitant to start cutting off too much of the drive so I thought I'd come here first and ask for a bit of advice.

Thanks

 

[Marc]

you can't expand C: because D: is in the way.

You've got plenty of free space on D: so I would suggest you shrink D: by 50% then expand K: and move all the data to there. Once that's done you can should be able delete D:

Expand C: by the extra 100GB, and then allocated the free space as you want (expand C: further, expand K: further, recreate D. Once you're all done, you can chance the volume letter on k: to D: if you just want two partitions.

Or you could shrink D: by 100GB and expand C: by the same amount.

But which ever way you go, don't do anything till you've got a backup

 

[Crewman47]

Thanks, I'll give that a go and see how I get on.

 

[Jadzia]

you can't expand C: because D: is in the way.

That's what I thought too, but I didn't want to say because I wasn't confident.

Confirm: A partition has to be sequential; it cannot be fragmented.

 

[Deks]

That's a bit of a messed up display if I ever saw one.


I would have suggested you keep the C: drive (where the OS is) lowest on space.
Depending on your needs, I think 100GB should be enough for it.
While splitting everything else between D: drive and the K: drive (though, wouldn't it logically be E: and not K: ? )

 

[Marc]

That's a bit of a messed up display if I ever saw one.


I would have suggested you keep the C: drive (where the OS is) lowest on space.
Depending on your needs, I think 100GB should be enough for it.
While splitting everything else between D: drive and the K: drive (though, wouldn't it logically be E: and not K: ? )

It would depend on what drive letters were available at time the drive was partition though K: is a bit down the alphabet.

Where the picture shows F: G: H: as removable drives, they would be from a media card reader which can take multiple cards but each slot would be allocated it's own drive letter and there could be an I: and J: thus when the drive was partitioned the new partition became K as it was the next available physical drive letter.

These days, between card readers, external drives, multiple optical, multiple hard disks and virtual drives it's easier to chew the drive letters.

 

[Crewman47]

Regarding the removable drives, I've got 5 of them, media card readers labeled F through J which is why K was the next available drive letter.

Since I moved that 100GB back onto the C drive I now have 67% free space on it. Initially I moved the 100GB over cause the computer said I running low on space when I was installing patches for a game, but I think due to the way I was installing them, I wasn't giving the computer time to refresh itself between installations. But on thinking about it now I'm wondering what is the total minimum that can be kept on the C drive taken into account OS upgrades, new games etc, would 100 or 200 GB be enough? It's the 64bit Windows 7 I've got if that makes any difference.

ETA - I've just checked my C drive and the exact figures are 412GB free out of 616GB total. That's a usage of around 204GB, so if I make the C drive around 300 or 400 GB should thi be enough?

 

[Deks]

That's a bit of a messed up display if I ever saw one.


I would have suggested you keep the C: drive (where the OS is) lowest on space.
Depending on your needs, I think 100GB should be enough for it.
While splitting everything else between D: drive and the K: drive (though, wouldn't it logically be E: and not K: ? )

It would depend on what drive letters were available at time the drive was partition though K: is a bit down the alphabet.

Where the picture shows F: G: H: as removable drives, they would be from a media card reader which can take multiple cards but each slot would be allocated it's own drive letter and there could be an I: and J: thus when the drive was partitioned the new partition became K as it was the next available physical drive letter.

These days, between card readers, external drives, multiple optical, multiple hard disks and virtual drives it's easier to chew the drive letters.

card readers do not mess up the drive letters like this.
If the manufacturer properly formatted the HDD in the first place, then none of this mess would occur in the first place.

It's usually the case with pre-installed windows for example, which is why I usually always make a clean install (after which I don't have problems of any kind).

 

[Jadzia]

card readers do not mess up the drive letters like this.

Mine does. It snatches EFGH whether there's cards in there or not. Leaving I and J for my pen drives.