[wisedave]

Hello,

I have a Toshiba Satellite Laptop computer with Windows 7 and a 500GB hard drive. My hard drive is getting full. When I looked at the space left, I found out that my C drive and D drive are allocated the same amount of space (232 GB each).

Can I allocate more space to the C drive without causing any issues? If so, what would be the proper amount to leave with the D drive.

If it makes any difference, I back up my hard drive to an external drive.

Thanks for any input!

Cheers,

Dave

[Mark1956]

You can use Gparted to change the partition sizes, what you leave on the D partition is entirely up to you.

Download Gparted from here and follow these instructions.

[flavallee]

It sounds like a copy of your backups to the external drive are being stored in the laptop's C: drive.

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[wisedave]

Hello Flavalee,

That's not the case as the D drive is almost empty. That's why I want to free up the space to the C drive.

Thanks for dipping in though!

Cheers,

Dave

[TerryNet]

My hard drive is getting full.

If so then shuffling partitions is not going to do anything--you have to delete stuff to free up space.

But then you go on to imply that the system partition ("C") is getting full but another partition ("D") has extra space. If this is the case, what do you have on that other partition? How much free space on it? What is the relative position of the partitions on the hard drive?

[wisedave]

Originally Posted by TerryNet

But then you go on to imply that the system partition ("C") is getting full but another partition ("D") has extra space. If this is the case, what do you have on that other partition? How much free space on it? What is the relative position of the partitions on the hard drive?

Hey TN,

It looks like recovery info....but I'm not sure. I don't know how to answer the other question in regards to the partition and relative position. Sorry I'm not THAT tech savvy.

Attached is a screen shot of what is on the D drive. What are your thoughts?


Many thanks!,

Dave

[TerryNet]

It certainly does appear to be a Recovery partition. I wonder why so large. Mine (Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on an HP laptop) is "only" 14 GB.

Do you have a set of Recovery DVDs in case you want to go back to "factory defaults" some day? Or have satisfactory images on your external drive (I don't know if that's what you meant by backups)? You really should consider, if you haven't already, how you will get Windows running again if it becomes unusable while messin' with the partitions or for any other reason.

The disk management window will show you the positioning on the hard drive and other useful information. Start - type (w/o the quotes) "disk man" - and hit Enter. For example see attach.

[Mark1956]

TerryNet "disk man" gives me an "Offline Files" window on my Win7 PC.

Wisedave, follow this.

Click on Start and type diskmgmt.msc in the Search box and hit Enter.
The Disk Management window will open. Open the window to full screen using the center button, top right hand corner.
Now take a screenshot: How to take a screenshot in Windows 7

Once you have saved the screenshot follow this to attach it to your next post:
Below the Message Box click on Go Advanced. Then scroll down until you see a button, Manage Attachments. Click on it and a new window opens.
• Click on the Browse button, find the screenshot/folder you made earlier and doubleclick on it.
• Now click on the Upload button. When done, click on the Close this window button at the bottom of the page.
• Enter your message-text in the message box, then click on Submit Message/Reply.

[TerryNet]

TerryNet "disk man" gives me an "Offline Files" window on my Win7 PC.

Interesting. Does it also give (before you hit Enter) "Create and format hard Disc partitions" (which is the first option I get with the search)?

EDIT: I tried on another system, and the Offline files stuff came up first and the disk management second in the search list. Thanks for the heads up.

[wisedave]

Originally Posted by Mark1956

Wisedave, follow this.

Here we go....I appreciate your help and efforts!

[Mark1956]

EDIT: I tried on another system, and the Offline files stuff came up first and the disk management second in the search list. Thanks for the heads up.

Yup, thats what I get.

Wisedave, has your hard drive always had this layout? Looks like the 400mb partition was the Recovery partition but has been wiped out and shrunk.

Anyway, you can alter the partition sizes by first right clicking on the D: partition and shrinking it and then do the same with C: and extend it. This should work without the need for Gparted.

[wisedave]

Originally Posted by Mark1956

Wisedave, has your hard drive always had this layout? Looks like the 400mb partition was the Recovery partition but has been wiped out and shrunk.

Hello,

As far as I know it has.....I don't know what happened. I'll check your solution out....

Many thanks!

Cheers,

Dave

[TerryNet]

You also have to move the "D" drive to the right so that the unallocated space is adjacent to "C" before you can resize "C" larger.

[Mark1956]

Terrynet, that has just reminded me of my own prior attempts to do the same thing so I had another go at it.

You cannot select which side of the partition the unallocated space gets created when shrinking a partition. With Wisedave's layout it will automatically put the space to the right of the D partition. Then when you expand C it will turn it into a dynamic partition splitting it into two places, you also get a warning about it not allowing an operating system from booting once that is done.

This should not be a problem if you use Gparted so I would recommend you make the bootable disc and use that, it gives a lot more options than Windows disk management so pick the options carefully and stop and ask if in doubt.

You will find fairly good instructions in the link I gave in post 2. One wonders why Microsoft can't make it that easy

[TerryNet]

GPart is probably best, but EASEUS Partition Master can also do most things from within Windows. I know GParted lets you shrink from the left (which means it really moves the data first) because I just did it a couple weeks ago.