Our C drive has run out of space. I want to departition our hard drive (the D drive contains system restore stuff) to make room for our ever-growing I-tunes folder. I figure (correct me if I am wrong) that since I have an external drive with system backup software, I don’t need the system restore stuff on the D drive. Also, our computer came with the software pre-installed and without the software disks, so I can’t just wipe the drive, departition it, and re-install the software. Any ideas?
I’d use the GParted live CD.
The much simpler route would be to get a second hard drive. You should be able to get iTunes to use that drive. Reinstalling Windows is not for the faint of heart.
I agree with control-g: get a second internal hard drive.
Besides avoiding the need to re-install, if you ever need the system restore stuff, you may have problems using it from an external (usb-connected) drive – many machines don’t do that well.
Another vote for getting another hard drive. Storage has become so cheap over the past few years that, unless you’re on a really tight budget, it really is best and safest in your situation to get another drive.
Have a look at this NewEgg page. They have a whole bunch of internal hard drives at very reasonable prices. You can get a Seagate 250Gb SATA drive for $65, and a 320Gb for $85. If you want some really big storage, you can get a 750Gb for $185.
If your motherboard doesn’t have SATA connectors, you can also get regular IDE drives for similar prices.
Note that NewEgg only sells OEM drives, so you’ll have to pay a few bucks and buy the connecting cables. I’ve bought three internal OEM drives from NewEgg, and they have all worked perfectly. I tend to buy Seagate, because they have never let me down, and because they come with a 5 year manufacturer’s warranty.
If you’ve never installed an internal drive yourself, it can seem a little daunting at first, but is actually a very straightforward task. This is especially true if you have SATA connectors, because you don’t have to worry about slave settings, etc.
ETA:
I should add that, if you insist on doing the departitioning thing, the GPartEd CD suggested by yoyodyne is an excellent freeware partitioning tool.
I neglected to mention a crucial detail–our computer is a laptop. Can you add a second hard drive to a laptop?
Is it running Windows Vista? The disk management in Vista lets you fairly easily delete certain partitions, or grow/shrink others. It shoudl let you get rid of the recovery partition and grow the C: drive to fill the freed space.
I don’t believe it works like that in XP.
I’m running XP. Besides, IIRC the D drive is just big enough to hold the recovery stuff; there is hardly any space left on that drive, so in any case I would have to delete the recovery stuff or move it to my external drive, which people are telling me is a no go.
If you want more space than deleting your D: will get you, I’d get a new large drive and a copy of Acronis True Image (there’s a downloadable version too). You can create a bootable True Image CD, boot to it, and create an image file of C: to the external drive (like a big .zip file). Then change out the internal drive and restore the image back to the new drive.
True Image can then be used a a good backup program in the future.
And you can buy an external enclosure for your old hard drive and use it as an external drive for other backups.
If you don’t want to pay for TrueImage, there are actually freeware imaging tools like PING that will do the job.
Heh, funny coincidence. I just (maybe 20 minutes ago) installed second hard drive.
On more factual note, migrating whole partition (like using True Image proposed by yoyodyne) and replacing internal hard drive with bigger seems like good idea.
On reread, what they said.
So can I create an image of my C: drive, wipe the D: drive, departition the whole hard disk, and then copy the image of my C: drive back to my unpartitioned drive? Or am I just going to have to buy a new hard drive? If you can’t tell, when it comes to computers, I eat stupid food for breakfast.
BTW, I’m still assuming you cannot install a second hard drive in a laptop, right?
I have seen people replace the CD tray in a laptop with a second hard drive (but losing the use of the CD tray.) I guess it would depend on what kind of laptop you have.
Alas, we need the CD drive. We have a Compaq Presario.
I fear I may just have to suck it up and buy a bigger hard drive. I could maybe switch out the hard drive on a desktop (I’ve seen it done), but I wouldn’t want to try it on a laptop, so I’d have to pay to have it done, thereby adding to the expense. Curses. Unless there is some miraculous solution to my problem, which it is seeming like there is not.
You can image C:, wipe the entire drive, and restore. If D: is sized for just the factory restore image you won’t gain a lot of space. If that’s what you want to do though using GParted is free, just delete D: and resize C:
So I can use GParted to delete D: and resize C: while leaving everything on C: intact? If so, that would be a good temporary solution. After you posted, I checked the size of my C: and D: drives; the former is 62gb, and the latter is 11gb. So it wouldn’t be much of a gain. In fact, really more of a delaying tactic; I see that a larger hard drive is at some point going to be inevitable.
It’s also possible to buy external hard drives that use USB(the same ports your iPod plugs in to). If you’re just looking to store your MP3 collection that could be a good option.
We’ve got one of those, but it’s not so good for travelling, when we want to watch stuff on trains, in cars, etc. But it’s not so bad; just a little awkward.
I don’t know about Compaq Presarios but on most laptops I’ve seen, swapping a hard disk is easier than it is on a desktop PC. Just open a flap somewhere on the case, pull the old disk out, slide the new disk in. Sometimes you have to mount the disk in a caddy, but it’s just a few screws.