Need advice-I think I made C: partition too small!

tfcolligan · 25 May 2009

Hello, new here. Good site.

I installed Win 7RC 32 onto a 160 GB hard disk which I partitioned. I allocated about 25 GB to C: system, and formatted the rest on to a D: drive for data. I've found that this may have been a mistake, as getting program installations to default over to D: are problematic (and not recommended by Microsoft, as per some previous threads I've read here).

And so I am running out of C space, and have several programs "manually" installed over to D. Quite frankly this is a pain, and I am about ready to throw in the towel and just try to extend the C drive. But maybe there is a way to avoid?

My question is this: what's my best approach to correct all this? Specifically, I'd like (if it is possible) for all my libraries/directories to default to D: so that I can readily reinstall Windows 7 (or downgrade) the C: System drive should it become necessary. This was my original goal and hope. I was able to have this with XP, although that was some time ago and I forgot the steps.

Anyone have an good suggestions for me, or should I just extend C: and give up this idea?

noyb · 25 May 2009

I store all my data in another partition .. do not use Documents ..
and try to keep my desktop stuff to a minimum.
I figured 50 gig should be enough .. so I made an 80 gig C drive.

Currently showing ~14 gig used and ~64 free

DocBrown · 25 May 2009

I remember several years ago, shrinking D drive with partitioning software. Moving the unallocated space next to the C drive. Then expanding the C drive to a larger size. Maybe somebody with more recent experience will read this and help us out, since Old-Timers disease affects "Doc's" flash memory

tfcolligan · 25 May 2009

Yeah, I had the same thoughts. But then I realized I am defeating my own purpose by not getting myself adapted to the whole "libraries" concept, since I may be in job environments in the future where I'll need to be able to support Windows 7 with all its newfangled functionality, and so forth.

I'm an old XP hound myself, and used your strategy on my Vista box to try to keep it all familiar and cozy. But now that 7 is out, and a lot of companies seem raring to roll, I figured I had better learn the stuff in its entirety. I am envisioning future corporate rollouts where the images will be set up in typical "small system c / large data d" fashion. I was just trying to emulate that kind of scenario to get a jump. Go figure.

linuzo · 25 May 2009

Welcome to sevenforums tfcolligan, I would recommend the smallest c: to be around 80GB for various reasons. It seems that with the large disks out there nowadays microsoft looks at 80GB perhaps as a XP guru would look at 25GB.

noyb · 25 May 2009

tfcolligan said:

...I'm an old XP hound myself...

I was wondering if you were thinking XP numbers ... Vista/Fixta is a HDD hog.

harpua · 25 May 2009

This might be slightly OT here but just wanted to say that I was initially very skeptical about the library organizational feature, but let me tell you, it is just awesome and has really simplified my life. For example, now I can see all the video files I have scattered on various drives in one "folder" view. This is really a convenience for me.

I would suggest not trying to emulate patterns of organization from previous iterations of the OS and just being open minded about giving the new structure and features a fair trial. You might be pleasantly surprised as I was. Now I wouldn't want to go back to working without libraries, that's for sure, and I really thought it was a screwed up idea at first glance.

mtnsteve · 25 May 2009

My drive is partitioned with a 30 GB C drive (logical) and 566 GB on the primary partition (D) . I moved "My Documents" to my D drive because of all my music, DVDs and pictures I had.

Even with a bunch of programs installed on C (I'm installing everything to see what works) I'm only using about 19 GB.

I'll eventually try W7 without partitions, or perhaps 80 GB for the logical as suggested.

Oh yeah, I love the Libraries feature.

Orbital Shark · 25 May 2009

Hi tfcolligan & mtnsteve, welcome to the forums.

You might want to have a look in the registry (run regedit from the start menu).

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

You will find the default setting for Program Files & %ProgramFiles%

Note: Be warned I have not tried this and it would be best to backup your registry before attempting this. Also, a clean install with nothing else at all installed would be the best environment to try these settings.

How to backup your registry
Within regedit, right-click 'Computer' and select 'Export' and save the .reg file to any specified location. You can then double-click this file to fully restore your registry.

Hope this helps :)

Jeff

OEM · 25 May 2009

tfcolligan said:

Hello, new here. Good site.

I installed Win 7RC 32 onto a 160 GB hard disk which I partitioned. I allocated about 25 GB to C: system, and formatted the rest on to a D: drive for data. I've found that this may have been a mistake, as getting program installations to default over to D: are problematic (and not recommended by Microsoft, as per some previous threads I've read here).

And so I am running out of C space, and have several programs "manually" installed over to D. Quite frankly this is a pain, and I am about ready to throw in the towel and just try to extend the C drive. But maybe there is a way to avoid?

My question is this: what's my best approach to correct all this? Specifically, I'd like (if it is possible) for all my libraries/directories to default to D: so that I can readily reinstall Windows 7 (or downgrade) the C: System drive should it become necessary. This was my original goal and hope. I was able to have this with XP, although that was some time ago and I forgot the steps.

Anyone have an good suggestions for me, or should I just extend C: and give up this idea?

I would try this...

Since vista, ms has put in some new tools to allow a user to extend and shrink volumes in disk management. I would try and shrink drive D: and if it gets you enough space to add to C: try extending that newly freed up space to C:. What might happen though is the free space created will be on the wrong side of D: so, you might have to use the "extend the drive" option for c: to use that space.

Another option if you have another hard drive is to temporarily move everything off of D:, delete that partition, and then, right click on C: and choose extend. Extend it, but leave enough for you to recreate a D Drive to move everything back to it that you copied off.

Lastly, and I have no idea how much you've installed onto D: as "programs files", but uninstall those programs, temporarily move the rest off, delete partition D, extend c:, recreate d: copy everything back onto it.

Good Luck