Moving all hard drive files 4 folders up.

[olivierth]

Hi,

I have 465gb of files and folders on a 500Gb hard drive that needs to be cut/pasted higher in the folder hierarchy.

Here's a visual:

The reason this happened is my HD broke down and I had to send it to a company (ChronoDisk) to extract the information to another HD. This is how they sent it.

I need to move those files because the path used by many programs/files are broken.

Is it possible to do this without actually cut/pasting? My guess is it might crash half way or simply not work at all because there is not enough empty space to make a cut.

Please help!

 

[LuzTeTT]

Do you have another HDD available? You could also make a new directory and cut+paste sub directories individually until you've made up the entirety of the folder.

 

[strollin]

...

 

[TheCyberMan]

To be honest the company should have done this for you, eliminating the hassle for you, i would go back to the company and raise a query big time.

Sorry i have to post that advice but i feel it is needed.

 

[olivierth]

Thanks LuzTeTT but I'll wait to see if there's an easier way to do it.

Nice trollin' strollin. When you "cut/paste" in windows, what it actually does is "copy/paste/delete original". That means if you cut/paste 465Gb, you need at least 465Gb free on your hard drive.

Thanks TheCyberMan. It sucks but I've lost enough time with that company.

 

[edwar]

You will need to COPY that data to Another drive. There is NOT enough space left on that drive to move anything.

 

[olivierth]

Alright, thanks for the help. I posted in case there was way to trick windows into just changing the path without the copy/paste aspect. I'm supposed to get another drive anyways...

 

[strollin]

...
Nice trollin' strollin. When you "cut/paste" in windows, what it actually does is "copy/paste/delete original". That means if you cut/paste 465Gb, you need at least 465Gb free on your hard drive. ...

Nice trollin yourself olivierth, after I realized you only had a 500G hdd to deal with, I removed my post 2 hours BEFORE you responded with your snide remark!

After thinking about it, I realized my original post was the actually the correct solution since when moving files around ON THE SAME DISK only the location is updated, the files are NOT ACTUALLY MOVED.

 

[Alejandro85]

If moving files within the same partition, Windows doesn't actually copy the files themselves over, just updates a reference on a directory table saying that those files are in a different location now. Not only you DON'T need any free space to perform the operation, but it also will be blazing fast, regardless of the amount of data there. Copying to a different disk is another matter. So, the simple cut-paste is the way to go.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Alejandro is right (also strollin is right). The cut-paste process within the same HDD is actually pretty friggin faster than actually moving the files (as it just alters the file's "position" in indexes not its physical HDD location).

 

[olivierth]

My apologies to strollin.

Past experiences had lead me to believe I needed free space to move files around. Also, you're reply had no explanations tied it so I hope you will understand why I thought you were joking around. On top of that you removed your reply because you thought you were wrong.

(I didn't see your reply on the forum, I saw it in my emails)

I couldn't risk jeopardizing such valuable data with any doubt. It took over a month and a lot of money to get the data extracted from my hard drive. The company I was dealing with had to send my HDD to a white room somewhere in France to get the data out.

Once again my apologies. I was only disrespectful because I thought you were doing the same to me.