I have a little Acer Revo HTPC. I am running out of recording space, so I took a look to see what was using up my 500GB drive. Turns out almost 50% of it is set aside in a partition for "Data". I would assume this is for system recovery, but it shows empty.
Can I reclaim this space or extend the main partition? I do not want to lose my ability to recover my system.
Hello SJM mate I use Partition Wizard to domost things with partitions I am not expert but I think that you can delete the D: and just extend the C: into the space it leaves.
MiniTool Free Partition Manager for Window 8/7/vista/xp | Partition Wizard Free Edition see my pic
PS the space made by deleting D: may show as unallocated space it is ko to go ahead and follow the pic instructions.
It is not used for recovery as there is nothing on it, you can either just start using that partition for data, a great idea so you can always just reinstall windows to C if you have to. Or you can delete it and add the space to C.
John has given excellent advice, but it can also be done just using Disk Management.
Simply moving your data to D will clear up plenty of room on C, i`ts 6 of 1 or a half dozen of the other kind of thing, it`s all 1 hard drive, so however you do it does not really matter, but your data should never be stored with C :)
Best thing you could do is buy an external usb drive for more storage. 2 TB or more.
I am a little confused. I know I see nothing on the D: partition and I have double checks to show any hidden files and still see nothing there. I THOUGHT the only way they could protect an system image for recovery would be to put it on a separate partition. How can Acer offer system recovery if the image is on the C: drive?
Completing this tutorial completely might help the good folks helping you. (ICIT2LOL and AddRAM)
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image
Hum well unless I am terribly wrong that recovery is just that the D: you can do with what I said to or using that software make it a usable partition by formatting it. If you use PW click on the D: and see if it will explore it that will show if there is anything on it or look in Disk Management it will show what the partition is probably unallocated.
Start > right click Computer > left click Manage > left click Disk management see pic for example.
Personally I like to back up (image) to an external drive / separate drive in case the internal goes south taking all hands down.
The tutorials will help you
Partition or Volume - Delete
Partition or Volume - Extend
Sorry Layback Bear. Totally missed the clues. Yes, disk management showed far more. And what a mess that disk is. Maybe you guys can help me determine what I need to save.
Hum had an idea Disk Management might show something like this. Now you can go in and use Partition Wizard and "Explore " each partition. MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server it is as I described before a very handy tool for doing a lot with partitions.
So instal PW and the right click on each partition and click Explore it will drop down a list of what is in the partition.
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