Reconfigure hard drives

natchezjohn · 20 Oct 2015

A friend has a PC that for some reason has two hard drives. One (drive 1) has 64 gigs and the other (drive 2) 1,300 gigs. The OS is on 1 and boots to it. This drive(A) has now reached capacity but the other has gobs of free space. Drive 2 has about 17 gigs of files on it and of course he'd wish to keep them.

What is the most efficacious solution?
Copy the relevant files that are on 1 - disconnect A and install OS on the other drive and dump the files saved from 1 on it
OR WHAT??

Layback Bear · 20 Oct 2015

Welcome to our forum natchezjohn.

Complete this tutorial so we can see what we are working with.

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

Note:
Drives have numbers (0,1,2, ect.)

Partition on a drive have letters. (C, D, E, ect)

Here is a picture from my computer for a example.

Reconfigure hard drives-disk-management.png

When Windows 7 is installed and running it should always be partition (C)

ignatzatsonic · 20 Oct 2015

Are A and B literally 2 separate hard drives or are they 2 partitions on the same hard drive?

If 2 partitions on the same drive, you would rob some space from B and give it to A, using an application such as Partition Wizard.

If A and B are literally 2 separate hard drives, you could make an image of A and restore it to a newly made partition on B.

You can't "copy" operating systems and expect things to work well.

What's on B?

Most importantly: how come there is no C drive?

natchezjohn · 20 Oct 2015

They are "literally" two separate drives. Why he doesn't know.
Don't mean to "copy" the OS from drive one just a pile of documents (8,000 or so)
Drive 1 is shown as C on My Computor

natchezjohn · 20 Oct 2015

Sorry layback I'm not at that PC and cannot print screen from it.

ignatzatsonic · 20 Oct 2015

I'd make a partition of perhaps 200 or 250 gigs on drive B.

Then make an image of all partitions on drive A, creating an image file. Use an application such as Macrium Reflect Free Edition.

Then create a recovery disk with Macrium.

Then boot from that recovery disk and restore that image file to the newly created partition.

That's the general procedure.

But there are nuances, so that's why it's much preferred to have your friend actually post a screen shot as Layback Bear suggested.

You say "Drive 1 is shown as C on My Computor". You can see his drives from your computer? How is YOUR drive 1 relevant to your friend's problem?

Layback Bear · 20 Oct 2015

When you can; we need that picture.

natchezjohn · 20 Oct 2015

ignatzatsonic said:

You say "Drive 1 is shown as C on My Computor". You can see his drives from your computer? How is YOUR drive 1 relevant to your friend's problem?

I remember what HIS "My Computer" looks like.

natchezjohn · 20 Oct 2015

Layback Bear said:

When you can; we need that picture.

I'll post it tomorrow when I'm back it his place

ignatzatsonic · 20 Oct 2015

natchezjohn said:

ignatzatsonic said:

You say "Drive 1 is shown as C on My Computor". You can see his drives from your computer? How is YOUR drive 1 relevant to your friend's problem?

I remember what HIS "My Computer" looks like.

OK. So I guess your references to drive A and drive B are just generic and not what they are actually named when looking at his PC.

Macrium Reflect is the best tool. There are tutorials for it on this web site, but you ought to post a screen shot of your friend's Windows Disk Management before jumping into it as I assume you don't have any experience with Macrium or similar programs.