Two drives on one HDD - make use of D, or expand C??

[smithee]

Okay, so my laptop has a C and D drive on the same single HDD. Currently everything is stored on the C drive, and it's running out of room, but the D drive is literally empty! I don't want to delete/uninstall anything (yet), so I have come up with two solutions:

1. Hold the installed programs on C, and my personal items (such as documents, music, pictures, and downloads) on D. I can create separate folders for Documents, Pictures, etc, and refer to them within the library. The problem with that is the Downloads folder doesn't seem to have its own library reference, and some applications (in theory) will add items onto C:\Users\****\Documents automatically (e.g. Dropbox). So another way around this is to have the actual My Documents etc on D, but that may cause complications (editing Registry?).
   
2. Expand C and shrink D (don't want to remove it completely, as some files exist on there already). Is there a built-in Windows tool/application that allows you to do this, or is it best to go 3rd party?

Which solution will be considered as the best approach whilst maintaining speed and accessibility to files? And if a 3rd party application would be useful for any step, then please say it

My computer is running Windows 7 64 bit Professional Service Pack 1

Thanks!

 

[steronius]

If your PC came with the two partitions, then most likely D is a restore partition. If this is the case and you change it, you may corrupt the system restoration options. If you have the Windows installation CD, then no problem.

If this is not the case, and you feel brave, then you could use a gparted live Cd to expand C and shrink D; however, shrinking has a small chance of file corruption issues, so perform a backup first.

Storing "My Documents" on D is smart for the case that you happen to corrupt Windows via a virus. It seems you can choose to define "My Documents" location (you could in XP, and i diont see a reason they would have removed this).
I found: http://www.w7forums.com/change-location-my-documents-folder-t338.html, possibly "Downloads" works the same.

The choice is still yours, but hopefully some info helps.

 

[clairev]

Use option 1 - very simple. I use that with great success. You can move the downloads file the same way you move my docs. No registry hacks required. With the 'system' on C: and all data on D: you can backup data easily, and maintain your system without losing data.

What ever speed you think you may lose is negligable. Virtually zero (not literally by the way).

 

[vv.bbcc19]

Use option 1 - very simple. I use that with great success. You can move the downloads file the same way you move my docs. No registry hacks required. With the 'system' on C: and all data on D: you can backup data easily, and maintain your system without losing data.

What ever speed you think you may lose is negligable. Virtually zero (not literally by the way).

Perfect suggestion.
It works

 

[smithee]

Here's what my current partitions looks like:


So by the looks of things, there's a separate partition for the recovery of the computer, so I could proceed to do step 2 rather safely. However:

Storing "My Documents" on D is smart for the case that you happen to corrupt Windows via a virus. It seems you can choose to define "My Documents" location (you could in XP, and i diont see a reason they would have removed this).
I found: http://www.w7forums.com/change-location-my-documents-folder-t338.html, possibly "Downloads" works the same.

This looks a lot simpler and safer. I'll proceed into doing that right away, and let you guys know the results

 

[creastery]

Resizing C Drive to give it more space is a good option, but do remember to copy the stuff over in C Drive after you define the "My Documents" location!
One thing to note is that if you use C Drive more than D Drive after defining "My Documents", I would recommend you to give C Drive 350GB and D Drive the remaining space.

 

[Brandon]

Windows has a built in option for resizing partitions, in that window you were in on the screenshot, right click the partition in the list, click 'Shrink Partition', it'll popup and do some work and popup a window to downsize, enter the amount and click done. Now right click your C: drive and click expand, enter the value and your done.

 

[smithee]

Hello everyone, thanks for all your comments!

I have completed redefining the location of the user folders to D, all went smoothly apart from a couple of issues with unmovable files in My Documents, which in turns cancels the entire process! Even the error message gave false information because I did not cancel it:


But after restarting the laptop and trying again one more time, SUCCESS! Here's a few snapshots of the results:


Afterwards, there was just a few settings I had to change with applications that used the original paths, such as Dropbox and Windows Media Player.

Also I would like to report that I haven noticed a slight improvement in speed of my laptop; perhaps because there's less files on the boot drive now (i.e. C), so it starts up and operates more quickly... brilliant!

Thanks to everyone for providing me with such information to help me get around this problem.