HD Pre-partitioned by Mfgr - need help!

[Crazicorn]

I hope someone can help me. We recently bought a new Sony Vaio w/ Windows XP Media Center. The problem is the way the hard drive is partitioned. The C drive is about 20GB and is where Windows, Program Files, User/Admin and Documents & Settings were installed. The D drive is the remainder of the 200GB HD and basically contains nothing.

We just ran into a problem and received a message that C Drive is full. My question is how do we get switch Program files, etc. to the D Drive? When we try to move any of the folders we receive messages that basically tell us we can't. (I do realize that it is important to have a lot of free ard drive space for using Media Center, but software programs, documents, pictures, etc. also need space). Any suggestions?

Thanks so much in advance.

 

[LONGHAIR]

Exactly how are you trying to move the folders when it says you can't?

 

[crjdriver]

You are getting the message because you cannot just copy program files to another drive and expect the program to work. The entries in the registry must point at the proper path ie C:\Program Files\Program\start.exe If you change it to D then the program will not run. There are third party utilities that can map a drive and change references from C to D. Instead of doing that, I would just uninstall and then install on the drive you want to put the program on.

 

[rmay635703]

You will have to go through the fun of uninstalling programs and reinstalling them to the d: drive.

Have fun!

 

[dustyjay]

Can you read D: drive in windows explorer? If not it may need to be formatted. Though I can't understand why it wouldn't have already been formatted if it was set up that way by the manufacturer. Unless, so many other things major manufacturers are dong nowdays, it was done in a halfmuled (how's that for socially polite) manor.

 

[dai]

i would partition the remainder of the drive into smaller partitions,and format them while they have nothing on them

 

[Crazicorn]

Thank you everyone for your fast responses. The fact is that the D drive is already formatted and does hold some files, mostly media such as recorded TV, music, pics, etc. But back to the issue at hand...I don't know how I can uninstall and reinstall the programs to the D drive because I don't have the actual installation disks. You know how it goes...preinstalled everything. I need tons of space on one of the drive for the Media Center (at least temporarily until they can be burned). But I'm wondering why Sony would install all of the programs on the small partition or why they wouldn't have made the C drive larger.

So, my question is this: how do I go about this switch?

Thanks again for all of your help.

 

[dai]

partition manager
http://www.ranish.com/part/

 

[LONGHAIR]

You don't have to store the files that these programs (preloaded on C) produce. If you don't have the discs to uninstall/reinstall, then you can just leave the programs alone (where they are) and move everything else. If you do it that way, your C drive will not be growing. I would guess that is the thought behind setting it up that way. It would be nice to explain that to the end-user though.
Also note that keeping your user created data away from the C drive allows you to reinstall everything from your "restore" discs with-out losing anything.

 

[Crazicorn]

Thank you once again. I will be moving everything that was not originally on the C drive to the D drive. Hopefully that will work.