Computer Question

audiobliss

When I wiped out my HD on my laptop and did a full fresh install of XP, I apparently made drive C much too small. I set it to be 5GB, and with My Documents and all my Program Files, I'm down to 740MB free, and I'm not done installing programs! So...since drive D is soo much bigger (22GB), can I change something here? My first thought was just move Program Files to drive D, but I'm not sure how that would affect things.

Any ideas? What can I do?

Thanks!

Oh, and I'm not really still browsing the forum...this is my evil twin posting for me...:p

Shizelbs

Why can't you just install your programs on the D drive?

dudeinaroom

make a new folder on the d drive label it programs and install programs there. you could also make a music folder to put songs in, but it would not work as your my music folder with out some tweaks. if you have programs installed on you c partition you would have to unistall and reinstall on the d drive as just moving them from one to the other would cause them not to function because of registry issues

later,
dude

ledhed

Well, if it didn't take you too long to do the install, re-do it. Why are you making a partition?

Also, installing into another drive will work but can get confusing and you will definitely want more space than that for files on your desktop.

audiobliss

Hmm. Good question. I guess I was just wanting to keep all my 'program files' with my 'Program Files' folder. I don't suppose it'd actually make much of a difference though, would it?

Oh, I just realized that I already remedied this situation. I alread created a 'Program Files' folder on drive D that I decided I'd start using. I forgot all about that. I guess I'll just start installing everything to that folder.

Thanks!

bobman1235

When I do an install, I always do three partitions :
C: OS ONLY (5-10GB)
PROGRAMS (20GB)
E: DATA (the rest of the drive) - for music, documents, movies, etc etc.

Has worked out GREAT for me for the 5 or 6 years I've been doing it.

audiobliss

Thanks for all the advice everyone; I appreciate it! It seems to be the general consensus to start a new file on D, so I'm glad that's what I did.

As for why I partitioned the HD...I don't know. I guess I was under the impression it's good to have the OS on a separate 'HD'? Is it?

dudeinaroom - Good idea with the music files. If I start ripping any music to my laptop, I'll definitely do that.

bobman - That sounds like a great idea with the three partitions! However, I'd need a lot more than 20GB for programs! I think I have a few programs installed on my desktop right now that take up about a gig by themselves.

Thanks all!

jmwest1970

You could also use a drive partioning program, i.e. Partition Magic, to resize your c: drive and remove the d: partition all together.

ledhed

Its good to have a "System drive" and then another, physically separate drive. That way, you get faster results. At least, this is the method I use for editing. I personally don't see a benefit to partitioning a drive if there is only one.

jmwest1970

audiobliss wrote:

As for why I partitioned the HD...I don't know. I guess I was under the impression it's good to have the OS on a separate 'HD'? Is it?

This is good for performance if you have multiple physical hard drives. It separates the IO for the OS from IO for the data. If you have 3 or more drives it's also a good idea to put your temp files on a 3rd partition. You don't gain that benefit when using a single drive because all partitions still sit on the same set of spindles.

Most people use partitions for organizational purposes, but there's not a performance gain. The exception is if you're using different file systems for different things, i.e. the way linux uses one FS for swap space and another for files.

brettw22

where the **** did you pull a 27 gig drive from? how about spending $50 on a drive and getting something big enough so you don't have to complain about drive space?

Polk65

bobman1235 wrote:

When I do an install, I always do three partitions :
C: OS ONLY (5-10GB)
PROGRAMS (20GB)
E: DATA (the rest of the drive) - for music, documents, movies, etc etc.

Has worked out GREAT for me for the 5 or 6 years I've been doing it.

Good planning for the day winblowz kills one of your partitions. Roll the dice and only one dies.
C: 10-20GB, 40GB, E: remaining space and make backups a couple times a year.

jmwest1970 wrote:

Most people use partitions for organizational purposes, but there's not a performance gain. The exception is if you're using different file systems for different things, i.e. the way linux uses one FS for swap space and another for files.

True for winblowz pc's after the dark ages of the 90's. No performance gain anymore but recovery and organization are good reasons.

ledhed wrote:

Its good to have a "System drive" and then another, physically separate drive. That way, you get faster results. At least, this is the method I use for editing. I personally don't see a benefit to partitioning a drive if there is only one.

Bingo. A different physical drive for caching will show obvious results, especially while editing large a/v files.

brettw22 wrote:

where the **** did you pull a 27 gig drive from? how about spending $50 on a drive and getting something big enough so you don't have to complain about drive space?

Hey! I still have a pc with a 1GB western digital playing with win95 every day since '95.

bobman1235

Performance wise, the only thing that really makes a difference is having your swap file on a different physical drive as your OS.

McLoki

One thing I have been doing with good results (if you have at least a gig or more of memory) is turn off the swap file in windows xp. (also doing it on my 2003 servers)

Windows still swaps, but it swaps to memory instead of your hard drive. As long as you have over a gig of memory, it should work out fine for you. If you are doing alot of video editing it may not, but then again - I bet that is not your main purpose of the machine with a 27 gig drive.

Michael.

BTW - all my servers are set up with separate c and d drives (physically separate). All my home machine are one large partition to avoid issues like you are having. If I need more performance on an older os, I throw in a spare 1-4gig drive and point the swap file to that drive.

It is alot easier to organize with folders that it is drive letters. - either way - put a dvd burner in the machine (or have one you can hook up) and back up your data. (especially photos)

edit - one more thing, if you do run with a swap file, put it on the "d" drive rather than "c" that will free up quite a bit of space on "C" for other programs. If you need help doing this, just ask.

audiobliss

Wow, even more advice; this is awesome!

Just for clarification purposes the computer in question is my 4 (?) year old HP laptop. It has an AMD Athlon 4 900MHz processor, 256MB ram, and a single, 27.9GB HD partitioned into two (C: 5GB, 22.9GB). So, 1GB of ram or swapping another HD in it really isn't an option. Which is cool because while it is slower than my desktop, it still does just fine for what I use it for: Office and some web surfing.

Now that I think about it, y'all all have a good point...I'm not sure WHY I partitioned the HD. I guess my thinking was for organizational reasons, but I'm thinking the benefit really isn't that great.

As for the swap file, I've never heard of that before. What is its purpose? And, ok, I'm asking...how do I move it, lol? I guess I'll try that, too.

And perhaps I should get a stick of 512MB RAM; that might help a bit.

bobman1235

The purpsoe of a swap file is basically for when you run out of RAM. If you ask me, it's becoming more and more obsolete for most people, because the average user never uses the 1-2GB of RAM their PC comes with, but that's a whole 'nother argument.

Anyways, what a swap file does is take "unused" temporary information that should be in DRAM and store it on your hard drive. When your system needs this information, it SWAPS it back into memory and puts some other less used piece of data on the hard drive. OBviously the hard drive is MUCH slower to access than memory, so this is a very costly process, but hopefully it happens in the background and rarely.

Sami

gparted will do the trick for free. Here's a link to the Live CD that lets you boot from a CD:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828

McLoki

Right click on my computer (in the start menu) and go to properties.

click the advanced tab (at the top of the pop up screen)

click the settings button under the performance area. (the first settings button)

click the advanced tab (at the top of the pop up screen)

click the change button in the virtual memory section (at the bottom)

click the c drive at the top (highlight it)
click custom size radio button
set the initial and maximum size both to 0

click the D drive at the top (highlight it)
click the system managed size radio button.

click the set button.

Reboot.

Once the computer comes back up, follow the instructions above and verify that your c drive is set to 0 size and your d drive contains your paging file. (will be at the top of the screen where you highlited the c and d drive)

any other questions, just ask.

Michael