Solved Re-partitioning Drives

[LevelBest]

I’ve been toying with the idea for months of repartitioning the C/D drives to allocate more space to the C. Firstly, would this increase the speed of the computer? This is my main reason for considering this.

I have documents/photos stored on the D drive and am unlikely to add to much to it, so there is a significant amount of disc space could be allocated to C as the screenshots show.

I am nervous of doing this in case it causes problems. The computer works fine, just slow at times. I don’t believe I can do this with windows tools as I would need a new partition taken from D to be positioned beside C in order to extend, so I don’t think I can achieve this with windows. I am thinking of using AOMEI.

If I encounter any problems, I know a system restore won’t revert the partitions but would a system image revert it?

 

[billmcct]

I would suggest using Minitool:https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html
Select the D: drive and select resize. Move the slider to the right to what ever size you want and select Apply at the bottom left. You wont lose any data unless you shrink the partition smaller than the data on it. Do the same for the C: drive sliding to the right to use the unallocated space at the end of C: and hit Apply again. And NO it wont make the computer any faster.

 

[michael diemer]

What would make it faster is replacing the hard drive disk with a solid state disk. Even a 250GB one would suffice for Windows, and you could use the entire HDD for storage. The storage drive doesn't need to be fast so HDD is fine.

and you could do this simply by cloning the present C drive to the SSD, so no need to reinstall Windows.

 

[billmcct]

He would need to clone all partitions except the D: drive. Or delete the D: drive first.
Or the entire drive and then delete the D: drive.
To boot the C: drive it will need the System partition.
You are right only an SSD will make it faster.

 

[SIW2]

As suggested an ssd is the best way to go. You can migrate your current system to the new ssd using something like diskgenius free version or hasleo backup

DiskGenius Download Center | Free Download DiskGenius

https://youtu.be/1gTJw8ehkVc?t=345

 

[dg1261]

I don’t believe I can do this with windows tools as I would need a new partition taken from D to be positioned beside C in order to extend, so I don’t think I can achieve this with windows.

I've never been a fan of Windows tools, so I'd never dissuade anyone from using a proper partition manager like Aomei or one of the many competitors, but technically speaking, this task could be accomplished with Windows' Disk Management if one chose to do so.

The process would involve deleting the D volume, deleting the Extended Partition (the green border surrounding the D volume) to create unallocated space, expanding the C volume as desired, and recreating a new D volume in whatever you don't allocate to C. Of course, you would first have to move your documents from the D volume and later put them back. (And you do already have a backup of those, don't you? If not, that should be your most urgent priority.)

But repartitioning won't speed up your computer. Windows can indeed slow down if it starts running out of space to work in, but that would be a C partition that is, say, 90-95% full or more. Your C partition is nowhere near that full, so your slowness is not due to the size of your C partition.

Aside from piecemeal cleanups (such as Windows logs, temp files, running background processes, et al), the surest ways to speed up a computer are a clean reinstall of the OS and swapping a mechanical HDD with a SSD.

I'm sure you know that, by the numbers, SSDs perform faster, but for a side-by-side demonstration, see my video here.

And if you also choose to do a clean reinstall, perhaps you'd want to consider my "rolling clean install" strategy to maintain the long term performance of your system.

If I encounter any problems, I know a system restore won’t revert the partitions but would a system image revert it?

Yes. You'd have to boot from a "rescue" CD or USB stick if Windows won't boot, so make sure you've created such media beforehand, make sure you can boot from it, and make sure that when booted it can see and restore from the media on which you stored the image. Just because your imaging program could see your backup media when creating an image from Windows, don't assume it will see it when booted from your rescue media. Test it to make sure.

 

[samuria]

Can you post a screen shot showing all details from diskmanger d is a logical partition which is strange in this day and age

 

[SIW2]

if it is the pc in the specs it is pretty old Dual Core P6200

 

[siliconbeaver]

second SSD, an easy way to improve old computer performance. even SATA SSD (inexpensive in today's market).
old hdd is completely out-of-date. no performance at all.

 

[LevelBest]

Thanks for all the information; so if re-partitioning won't help the general speed, then I will leave it as it is. I've had a look at videos of swapping HDD to solid state, I wouldn't be confident doing this. Once the laptop fires up in the morning, it's ok, it's old but reliable. I do have a clean up every so often and that helps.

 

[townsbg]

The only performance change would be a decrease if the windows partition is too small. Windows needs at least 15% free at all times. You could have a larger page file but that would only help if you have a low amount of ram and run a lot of apps and really only if you an ssd. Your specs say 4 gb. In this day and age that's low but doable for windows 7 provided you watch how much run at any one time and turn unnecessary services off. Low memory is a performance killer especially with a platter drive. Windows 10 and especially 11 are such memory hogs I couldn't imagine having anything less than 8 gb with them.

 

[Alejandro85]

A separate question I would first do is why do you want to have two partitions to begin with?
Personally, I would join both C and D together in a single, large partition spaning all the disk, and use folders to keep everything ordered. This will also prevent any problems with lack of space in one of them and plenty in the other.

Performance-wise, unless C is critically low (say, a few GBs), but even then, Windows would work quite well and don't degrade performance too much. Only consider repartitioning if your usage estimations went wrong.

 

[michael diemer]

Thanks for all the information; so if re-partitioning won't help the general speed, then I will leave it as it is. I've had a look at videos of swapping HDD to solid state, I wouldn't be confident doing this. Once the laptop fires up in the morning, it's ok, it's old but reliable. I do have a clean up every so often and that helps.

Nothing wrong with leaving it as it is. I have an old machine with 4 GB ram, and I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu 16 on it. As you say, it just takes a bit longer to boot up and be ready for use. After that, it's fine. It's easy to screw things up, especially the first time you try something like that. If you're not feeling adventurous, don't risk it.

 

[LevelBest]

My thinking too, plenty to go wrong with very little if anything to gain. In response to Alejandro, when I got the laptop and went through set up, it automatically set this partition. The D drive has only been used in the last few years when I put all my docs, photos etc on it. I'll leave it as it is, sometimes the best course of action is no action!

Thanks everyone.